Appleton Medical Center

Transforming Patient Care

Breakthrough Storage System Helps Deliver Quality Care at ThedaCare

Situation:

Appleton Medical Center (AMC), Appleton, Wis., is part of ThedaCare™, a four-hospital health system that includes 21 physician clinics and a host of specialty services. ThedaCare introduced its proprietary method of inpatient care in a 14-bed unit at AMC staffed by 32 nurses. The new approach, known as “Collaborative Care,” incorporated a number of key goals related to supplies storage. Specifically, ThedaCare wanted to:

• Maximize storage of equipment, supplies and medications inside patient rooms – giving nurses more time for patient care.
• Store essential items in a way that minimizes the frequency of traffic in and out of patient rooms.
• Complement the strategically designed footprint of patient rooms and make the most of each room’s highly valuable, yet limited storage space.
• Streamline materials management as a way to lower costs.

Given the challenges, ThedaCare set out to overhaul the way it stores materials and medications on patient floors.
 

SOLUTION:

Working with architectural firm, Hammel, Green and Abrahamson, Inc. (HGA), ThedaCare redesigned the 14-bed unit to eliminate traditional clean utility storage rooms. Doing so created the need to efficiently store frequently accessed supplies inside the patient room. For help with its storage challenge, ThedaCare teamed with Spacesaver and its local representative, Storage Systems Midwest, Inc., to design and install a breakthrough storage system – CoreSTOR™ patient server, a unique and highly adaptable innovation that serves as a decentralized nurse supply station.

ThedaCare’s visionary Collaborative Care model has succeeded on all counts. By combining a new approach to patient care and redesigning the patient floor with a number of unique innovations, such as the CoreSTOR system, the 14-bed unit:

• Lowered the cost of care by 21 percent
• Reduced the length of patient stays by 17 percent
• Functioned 270 days (nine months) without an HAI incident
• Produced 100 percent compliance in nearly all quality measures
• Achieved patient scores above 90 percent for overall satisfaction
• Locates 85 percent of the most frequently used, everyday items inside patients’ rooms, increasing the amount of time nurses spend with patients.
• Reduced unproductive hunting and gathering time an average of 2.5 hours per 12-hour shift.
• Reduced traffic in patient’s rooms by as much as 75 percent.

Based on the results of the pilot, Collaborative Care is at the heart of ThedaCare’s $90 million initiative to redesign AMC and Theda Clark Medical Center. Planners will adapt the CoreSTOR system for use on a host of additional units, which range from patient floors to surgery to in-patient rehabilitation, as the pioneer in healthcare continues to transform and enhance the quality of care.