BWH to Launch New System for Patient Coverage Data
Brigham and Women’s Hospital is rolling out a new system, the Partners Enterprise Patient List (PEPL), which will connect each inpatient with a primary responding clinician (RC). BWH defines the responding clinician as the physician, physician assistant, nurse midwife or nurse practitioner who can quickly take action to treat a patient for an urgent issue at the bedside or in response to a critical alert.
“PEPL serves as a foundational practice through which a responding clinician is tied to his or her patient electronically, and is updated constantly as coverage changes, making it much easier to identify which clinician can be contacted 24/7 to respond to urgent patient issues,” said Tejal Gandhi, MD, MPH, executive director of Quality and Safety in the Center for Clinical Excellence at BWH.
O’Neil Britton, MD, vice chair of Medicine at BWH and associate chief of Medicine at Faulkner Hospital, said, “PEPL will serve as framework upon which we can enhance patient safety and the efficiency of patient care though the development of integrated web-based clinical systems.”
Adopting PEPL will require a cultural change in the ownership of the coverage relationship and a change regarding how this data is collected and maintained. Unlike existing coverage systems based on BICS schedules or the PPD, which are maintained by administrative staff, PEPL requires that real time coverage data is maintained by the clinician at the point of patient care as part of the clinical handoff.
Other systems at BWH will draw from the coverage data in PEPL, including the Pod Monitor, which will display a new column identifying the Responding Clinician. This will allow clinical staff to click on the RC name to send him or her a page.
Since PEPL collects, stores and disseminates all responding clinician-patient relationships, it allows clinicians to create lists of patients currently assigned to their clinical team and establish coverage for all patients on that list with just a few clicks. PEPL will be a new product found under your PC’s Start Menu > Partner’s Applications.
Orthopedic Surgery began using PEPL in October. Additional departments will be phased in during subsequent months. Detailed education and training will be provided at the time your service is scheduled to adopt PEPL.
Questions?
Send feedback to BWHRespondingClinician@partners.org