St. Paul’s Renal Program: Finding the story behind the numbers with BC PSLS Analytics

Patients with kidneys that no longer function properly receive regular hemodialysis to filter wastes, salts and fluids from their blood. The St. Paul’s Hospital Renal Program is the largest in BC – it houses a 46-station hemodialysis unit that serves 300 patients, on average, three times per week. Here’s how their team uses BC PSLS Analytics (business intelligence) to identify quality improvement opportunities and enhance patient care.

Understanding how to retrieve healthcare data, interpret it, and use it to inform operational decision-making is essential for improving quality of care and patient safety. But the majority of healthcare providers are not trained in how to use business intelligence (BI) tools and analytics platforms, making it difficult for healthcare organizations to fully benefit from these incredible technologies.

To help, we introduced BC PSLS Publications in 2013 to give healthcare leaders access to pre-formatted interactive reports of category-specific data for their area(s). We’ve received positive feedback about the quality and usability of these reports, but the real value of BC PSLS Analytics is knowing how to delve even deeper – how to “slice and dice” the data – and that’s where the expertise of a data analyst can offer unparalleled insight.

For Michele Trask, Renal Program Operations Leader, Karl’s knowledge of healthcare data and his ability to work with BC PSLS reports in a familiar environment (such as Excel) has been critical for her team to identify areas for improvement.

Michele says it took some time, but staff have become more familiar and comfortable with BC PSLS data, recognizing its value for shedding light on fixable issues.

This progression from data collection, to analysis, to a process of social and participative learning is indicative of a culture of safety, and enables the Renal Program team to effectively use BC PSLS to achieve meaningful improvements in patient safety.

From reporting to learning to improvement

Falls Prevention

Falls prevention is extremely important for dialysis patients because they often have frail bones, even if they are young. Using BC PSLS Analytics, the Renal Program team identified transfer points and stepping on the scale as two situations where patients were at high-risk for falling (transfer points include moving from a bed to a dialysis chair or wheelchair, and patients are weighed every time they come for dialysis).

Medication Safety

Patients who suffer from renal failure usually take multiple medications, several times per day, making it difficult for them to keep track. With BC PSLS Analytics, the Renal Program team identified why certain medication errors were happening with increased frequency in certain populations and implemented a new change based on their findings.

Hand Hygiene

Hand hygiene is an important patient safety measure in all areas of healthcare. When the Renal Program team noticed a spike in their BC PSLS data it raised a flag that there was a problem.  

All of these changes are helping to keep dialysis patients safe. Looking forward, Michele would like to improve the patient experience even more by bringing in an artist so that patients who have an interest in painting or drawing will have that opportunity during their dialysis appointment.

“It’s a very different relationship with dialysis patients. You get to know them and what they like and who they are as people in terms of what is meaningful to them, so it’s important that we make their experience the best it can be,” she says.

Hemodialysis re-design wins 3M Quality Award – St. Paul’s Hospital

Additional resources: 

• The Kidney Foundation of Canada