Philips and U.S. healthcare provider CoxHealth co-design in-house virtual care solution to help improve patient outcomes and increase staff satisfaction

When CoxHealth, a not-for-profit healthcare provider in southwest Missouri, USA, asked Philips to help implement virtual care throughout its hospital network, it wasn’t looking for a turnkey ‘out-of-the box’ solution. Unlike some hospital groups that leverage electronic intensive care units (eICU) and telehealth technology to outsource patient supervision for parts of the working day, CoxHealth wanted a solution staffed entirely by its own employees and that expanded beyond just intensive care units. Just as importantly, it wanted a solution that allowed its nurses and physicians to move seamlessly between the bedside and the virtual care team environment. CoxHealth believes that mutual trust and teamwork are key to optimizing the patient and staff experience in terms of staff satisfaction, retention, and technology acceptance, as well as improved patient outcomes and higher patient satisfaction scores. It also believes that virtual care should enhance bedside care, not replace it. CoxHealth does not plan to reduce its bedside nurse-to-patient ratios.

“The excitement from our clinical staff about this [new way of working] is overwhelming. Because of this change in our approach to care, we have experienced nurses coming back to us that may have left before because they weren’t sure if they wanted to continue doing bedside care. Our staff has reported feeling better supported in providing the best patient care,” said Beth Polivka, Senior Vice President and System Chief Nursing Officer at CoxHealth. “In addition to improved clinical outcomes, including reduction in central line infections and readmissions, we also anticipate this being a big differentiator for us with recruitment of staff, and we look forward to welcoming even more talented people to our team.”

The roll-out of telehealth and virtual care, which rapidly accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic, has been shown to improve patient care, patient experiences and outcomes. For example, an eICU program can reduce both mortality rates and the length of stay for a patient [1] and CoxHealth wanted to collaborate with Philips to innovate beyond just an eICU program to better serve its patient population. The solution that Philips co-created with CoxHealth is based on the close integration of Philips eCareManager enterprise telehealth software and Philips Capsule Surveillance software. Powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced clinical algorithms, eCareManager synthesizes patient data and translates it into meaningful information that will help CoxHealth clinical staff to identify patients most at-risk wherever they are in the hospital and allocate resources accordingly.

A centralized database of patient information ensures that bedside and virtual care teams always have access to the same up-to-date information so they can collaborate efficiently and effectively. Philips Capsule Surveillance adds continuous analysis of live-streaming medical device and other patient data to help identify actionable patient insights to support proactive care. The combination of eCareManager and Philip Capsule Surveillance allows caregivers to receive contextualized notifications, view patient data such as acuity scores and vital signs waveforms, and access insights and expert advice wherever they are – at the patient’s bedside, in the virtual care command center, or in the medical facility. Audio-video links allow the virtual care team to interact directly with individual patients and bedside equipment when required.

“From the outset, the Philips team worked alongside CoxHealth to fully comprehend the vision of CoxHealth’s leadership team and identify the necessary key performance indicators and impact measurements. It was not a situation where we supplied a standard solution, it was an opportunity for us to listen and learn. We helped conceptualize the customer’s ideas and requirements as they designed a virtual care delivery program that would directly address the needs of their staff, while standardizing and improving care delivery and helping achieve the goal of better patient outcomes”, said Shiv Gopalkrishnan, Business Leader EMR & Care Management at Philips.

Philips is adding the technology to every in-patient ICU and medical-surgical patient room at Cox South, Cox Medical Center Branson, Cox Barton County, and Cox Monett hospitals. Mobile carts will also be available for emergency departments in several system hospitals. By the end of 2023, CoxHealth expects to have the technology in approximately 700 beds. The solution combines CoxHealth’s in-house virtual care expertise with the benefits of an enterprise-wide system that is vendor-neutral to monitoring equipment, upgradable to accommodate new developments such as AI-assisted clinical decision support, connected and integrated to standardize and improve workflows, and data-driven to facilitate continuous performance optimization.

[1] Lilly CM, et al. A Multi-center Study of ICU Telemedicine Reengineering of Adult Critical Care. CHEST. 2014 Mar; 145(3): 500-7.