Customer Success Story:

Uninterrupted connectivity helps Allina home-health providers serve more patients

The Challenges

Allina Hospitals and Clinics operate 11 hospitals, four ambulatory care centers, and 97 clinics. Their top-rated homecare and hospice division relies on remote Electronic Medical Record (EMR) software to review patient medical history, update care plans and document other important patient status information. But nurses were regularly losing connectivity in the field. This caused critical applications to log off without warning, affecting care delivery and forcing nurses to re-enter lost data. Some session interruptions resulted in corrupted data, requiring IT to extract files from the central database – a repair that often took half a day. Nurses frequently waited until the end of their shifts to sync from an office or at home, lengthening their workday. Several quit in frustration.

The Solution

Since adopting NetMotion, homecare and hospice providers have seamless connectivity throughout the day, providing secure, stable EMR access at patients’ homes and other visit sites, and at the office. Within the first six months, nurses on average saved enough time to visit up to three additional patients per day. Not only did staff attrition decrease, Allina credits NetMotion as a key factor in helping the organization double its homecare unit’s staff. It has made NetMotion standard for any staff member experiencing connections with a latency higher than 100 ms.

To avoid disruption, Allina began with a 25-nurse pilot project, but then quickly deployed NetMotion to its full homecare team. This soon extended to nurse practitioners, managers, directors and doctors throughout the organization.

The analytics capabilities built into the NetMotion solution provide the IT team with visibility to proactively identify and resolve problems before they can impact the quality of care. In addition, automated alerts contain specifics of each case, such as whether an account has been locked due to failed user password entries. These improvements have practically eliminated helpdesk tickets related to mobile connectivity issues.

Nurses are no longer frustrated with their mobile technology and are now able to see an additional three patients each per day.
Clyde Daisley, System Engineer,
Allina Healthcare

The IT team is pleased that connectivity-related tickets have effectively been eliminated.
Clyde Daisley, System Engineer,
Allina Healthcare

The Results

All-day connectivity helps healthcare workers stay focused on patient care. Nurses, on average, visit around nine patients per day, an increase of up to four additional patients. Morale is up, and the department has doubled in size. For the IT team, connectivity-related tickets have effectively been eliminated.