Hospital Uses EMR to Improve Handoff Process and Create Electronic 'Hall Pass'

Nurses were trained to use the EMR so that if a patient was to be transported to another department, they could merely go into that patient's record and click "print hall pass" for all of the necessary information to be printed.

Transfer staff members were trained to make sure that any patient ready to be escorted had a printed hall pass and to reconcile that information. If any patient information was missing, the transfer staff member would stop the process until he or she could locate the information.

The departments receiving patients from a transfer played a large role in redefining this process. Mimm says she originally was collecting data regarding whether the information on the hall pass was present, but she has since shifted to understanding who is receiving and using that information.

"What's nice is we can give monthly feedback to the receiving departments on how they are doing with reviewing the hall pass, and we're able to hit compliance because they were getting timely feedback," says Mimm.

This process has worked well since implementation and has increased the awareness of the support staff, without whom this process redesign would not have been possible, says Mimm.

"The whole process made me really appreciate the people outside of the nursing department who really need to know more about our patients and are concerned about their safety," she says.

Plans for future alterations

The simple set of directions for preparing the electronic hall pass is something that AMH staff members hope can be easily taught to transfer staff members. Instead of having nurses print the hall pass after updating the patient's record during rounds, AMH is planning to engage the escort staff members in the process more to minimize risks.

"If the hall pass is printed at 9 o'clock in the morning, it's only as good as the information updated until 9 o'clock," says Humbrecht. To that end, transfer staff members will be trained on how to enter the patient's record and print the most up-to-date hall pass upon arriving to pick up the patient.

Although Humbrecht and Mimm stress that the idea is to keep the printout as simple as possible, they are considering adding patient allergies to the form.

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