AnnualReport2021

PATIENT-REPORTED OUTCOMES Shriners Hospitals for Children has been successful over the past five years in reshaping the clinical encounter by capturing patient-reported outcomes (PROs) questionnaires. These provide information from our patients on what is most meaningful to their quality of life. Previously, the health care system offered iPads to patients, or their families, to gather the information on quality of life issues, including information about the patient’s mobility, upper extremity function, quality of relationships with peers, pain intensity and how pain interferes with daily activities. Physicians rely on this information to link clinical variables with health-related quality of life. In 2020, we recognized that having patients complete these questionnaires in advance of their hospital or clinic visit would be beneficial to both patients and our staff. Now, patients receive a text message or email that allows them to complete the questionnaire on their own personal cell phone or computer. As a result, we’ve seen that answering these questions outside of the clinic cuts down on the length of time it takes a patient to complete the survey, reduces the administrative burden on our staff, and saves on equipment expenses for the organization. In addition, having the ability to answer the questionnaire on one’s own device cuts down on the number of surfaces touched and germs shared – something extremely valuable as we faced the COVID-19 pandemic. To date, Shriners Hospitals for Children has captured over 180,000 questionnaires, making us one of the largest repositories of pediatric PROs data. In the past six months, approximately 30% of surveys have been completed via text or email in advance of the clinic visit. USING TECHNOLOGY TO IMPROVE PATIENT CARE The Shriners Hospitals for Children medical informatics team is focused on improving medical workflow, using our existing technology to benefit our patients and medical staff by allowing them to more easily document

tracking progress and documenting care. The provider simply opens the application, finds the patient encounter, takes the picture and files it in our EHR. The photos are not stored in the phone, but rather travel right to the patient’s medical chart where they can be viewed by the care team. Medical informatics has also deployed new documentation tools to enhance the ability of our medical staff to effectively and efficiently document the care they provide to patients. Working in conjunction with our provider, we deployed a new way of documenting patient care called Dynamic Documentation. This new method allows providers to review and document patient care, without having to “jump” around in the EHR to find information and document appropriately. In addition, Dynamic Documentation ensures that elements that were documented in the chart are pulled into the providers note, thus streamlining the amount of documentation the provider has to enter, and helping ensure that the documentation is consistent.

and review patient information and increasing secure access to the patients’ medical records when the staff is working at a non-Shriners Hospitals site. Today, we like to use our smart phones to do most everything – banking, travel, finding information are all at our fingertips. Medical informatics has now made mobile solutions available to our medical staff. A platform called PowerChart Touch provides a suite of applications that allow medical staff to easily review pertinent patient information while walking between clinic rooms, enter simple orders from virtually anywhere, document a note using their voice, and take a clinical picture of a patient, using a mobile device. PowerChart Touch allows providers to review information on their patients, enter simple orders and have access to aspects of our Electronic Health Record (EHR) anywhere there is a WiFi or cell signal, all from their mobile device. Camera Capture allows providers to use an iPhone to take pictures of their patients for medical decision making,

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