Innovative doesn’t always mean revolutionary. Great big changes that yield giant returns.
Small advancements equal significant improvement
Instead, an innovation in a process or procedure often produces small, consistent advancements that, over time, can add up to significant improvements. Those improvements can be savings in time or money, or both – because, after all, time is money. And the improvements can show up in greater job satisfaction for your nurses, higher ratings from patients and families, and a growing referral pipeline.
Symbria’s RDE™ (Remote Data Entry) service is one of those process innovations that produces very positive, proven outcomes. Symbria developed RDE as a solution for clients who were challenged to balance the best use of their nurses’ time with the need to enter medication and treatment orders for new admissions.
Do what you do best
The concept behind RDE is actually quite simple: let every contributor do what they do best. In this case, let pharmacy professionals – experienced certified pharmacy technicians – enter pharmacy orders and give clinical staff the opportunity to focus on welcoming and caring for your residents.
RDE’s pharmacy techs are fast and accurate, and Symbria clients experience cost savings of 20% to 30% over nurse order entry. New admission processing time can be reduced by up to 50% overall.
Linda Carrigan is Corporate Director of Clinical Services for Healthcare at Franciscan Ministries headquartered in Lemont, Illinois. The Chicagoland Franciscan system is made up of six skilled nursing centers, all of them part of Life Plan communities. They adopted Symbria RDE about six years ago.
RDE is a no-brainer
“For us, it was a no-brainer,” Linda said. “Why wouldn’t we encourage our teams to use it? A nurse typically takes about an hour to enter a new patient’s medications and treatments. With RDE, Symbria’s pharmacy techs enter orders in draft mode and our nurses just need to review them. New admission time drops by 25% to 30%, and when we are paying nurses as much as $45 per hour – and up to $100 per hour for agency staff – that translates into significant savings.”
“An unanticipated benefit came from the RDE service when we transitioned to the Point Click Care EHR,” Linda said. “Our RDE tech was a huge help in the roll out, especially with treatment orders.”
New pharmacy client recognizes RDE benefits
Lutheran Senior Services (LSS), a St. Louis-area non-profit organization, comprises eight Life Plan communities and one standalone assisted living center, as well as affordable housing, and home and community-based services. A long-time Symbria therapy client, LSS transitioned to Symbria for pharmacy last spring.
Director of Clinical Compliance Rachel Little said Remote Data Entry was a service that LSS took advantage of early on. “We identified that the order entry process was a burden on our frontline co-workers,” Rachel said. “In addition, we were seeing admission order errors. We felt that if we could partner with Symbria to complete this task that the frontline co-worker could focus on the resident, and the data entry would be completed without interruption.”
She added that LSS patients have experienced fewer missed medications thanks to the timely entry of medication orders. “Order entry for our staff previously took approximately 45 minutes per admission,” Rachel said. “The RDE service has cut that time in half.”
Innovation that delivers benefits
These two client stories are typical of the experience that Symbria RDE delivers. “We encourage fresh thinking and new ideas among all of our employee owners,” said Vice President, Pharmacy Operations, Derek Brown. “And it’s that focus on innovation – small and large – that helps us deliver real benefits to our clients.”
Symbria: Trusted Partner. Proven Outcomes.
For more information about Symbria’s One Price plan, call 630.413.5824 and they will connect you with the appropriate Director of Business Development.