In the past two years, healthcare professionals were forced to change the existing ways of their work to move fast and ensure the best care in very challenging times. On the other hand, the pandemic offered the health systems new opportunities to adopt digital services and empower clinicians and healthcare workers to start using video conferencing tools in their daily work with patients and other care professionals.
In-person interaction was in most cases successfully replaced by online meetings, using video tools like MS Teams, Cisco Webex or Zoom. The same goes for cross-institutional / regional Multidisciplinary Team Meetings (MDTs), where the team would meet online and discuss the patients outside of their classical conference rooms. However, many of the needs remained unmet.
Finding the right ways to maximise the effectiveness of MDT meetings (on top of video conferencing)
MDT members today still report frustrations such as unstructured work, cumbersome and time-consuming meetings, lack of time to prepare recommendations, compromised quality of patient care and other potential improvements related to streamlining their existing process.
Considering these challenges, it is essential to think about how to simplify clinical work to gain as much time as possible for patient care and make more sustainable care services without compromising patient safety.
1) Time-consuming and error-prone information exchange
MDTs today
Depending on the hospitals involved or regional specifics, MDT members use different ways of accessing the data and exchanging patient information, such as e-mail, Sharepoint, direct access to HIS, or other online tools relevant to MDT decision-making. Having important information accessible online has improved the way of sharing information compared to sharing paper-based documentation via post. However, it is still error-prone, time-consuming, and not secure as these open environments are regular targets of cyberattacks.
Above all, the demand from administrative workers to manually extract all patient data from different sources can potentially compromise patient safety – in almost 10% of cases in the UK (1), patients were rescheduled to another MDT only due to missing documents that were crucial for making a decision. Information gets lost in different systems, consequently, a patient needs to be rescheduled and wait in stress for the decision for another week or two instead of being treated as soon as possible.
Automated information exchange with Vitaly
Vitaly enables safe and secure information exchange cross-institutions. Connecting different HIE systems and regional Health Information Exchange backbones allows smoother distribution of all patient data relevant for MDT review. Automated data exchange is enabled from PACS, EHR, XDS repository, VNA, and regional Health Information Exchange backbones based on international Healthcare IT standards, supporting the highest safety and security.
The request for MDT review can be prepared 6-times faster compared to the usual information exchange, as the requesting phase can be fully integrated with Electronic Patient Record (EPR), which consists of all relevant patient information (diagnostics, patient history, checkups, blood tests, etc.). It’s also a great time saver for administrative workers because there’s no need for copying/pasting to Sharepoint and creating unnecessary duplicates or missing crucial information. Additionally, the final case report is distributed automatically for review to all MDT participants and the requesting physician, significantly decreasing manual work, speeding up the process and helping patients receive treatment in the shortest time.
2) Limited clinical time and frustrations
MDTs today
At the meeting, the MDT members usually have no more than 5 minutes to review a single patient case. The first time the patient case is presented to the majority of MDT members is usually at the MDT meeting through screen-share. Collaboration usually happens only in the phase of the discussion, as the MDT members rarely get access to relevant patient data before the meeting, so they have to take tough and life-changing decisions in a matter of minutes. They often don’t have enough time to review the documentation and efficiently prepare, which is stressful and frustrating, while the preparation time can be crucial and can also impact the meeting duration.
Streamlined MDT workflow with Vitaly
Vitaly streamlines the complex decision-making process through an automated workflow that helps MDT participants effectively prioritise, manage and organise their time regardless of where they are located. Automated reminders and notifications support every single MDT member to be informed and know exactly when and how to contribute through clearly assigned roles and responsibilities. Collaboration between members is enabled in all phases of MDT – from request to finalisation.
In the requesting phase, the case form is completely adjusted to the clinical needs, with minimum core data requirements and many possibilities of configuration and optimisation that save time when requesting the patient case.
In the scheduling phase, it helps to manage the MDT capacity by assigning the agenda of patients more flexibly so that urgent cases can be presented at the beginning of the meeting.
In the preparation phase, the MDT specialists can share their preliminary findings or recommendations with the rest of the team before the meeting. They have all information available and don’t have to attend the MDT if not required.
In the meeting phase, a clear agenda is set. The MDT chair can easily access all patient data and coordinate the final decision to get the best-informed decisions and lead the meeting efficiently and effectively.
In the decision phase, the final decision report is automatically distributed to all members and the requesting physician, and added to the EPR, so the treatment can start immediately without any human bottlenecks.
3) The need for greater flexibility
MDTs today
With video collaboration tools, MDT members can connect anywhere, allowing greater flexibility in arranging their time. There’s no need to travel, which brings financial and time savings. Still, they are acquainted with the information about the patient for the first time at the meeting as there is no other option to review patients before the meeting, which can compromise the quality of decisions.
Efficient MDT preparation with Vitaly
Every MDT member can easily access and view the data of all assigned patients that require their expertise before the meeting in order to efficiently prepare recommendations. Besides, the MDT participants can easily access the application from their preferred device. Moreover, all information about past cases is available to all members anytime, giving lots of possibilities to learn and exchange knowledge.
4) Limited insights into the MDT service performance
MDTs today
The video collaboration tools enable a very basic analytical overview, such as tracking MDT attendees and the meeting duration. They can also access the meeting recording after the MDT is completed. However, no historical data is available for comparison of efficiency, MDT members’ productivity and quality of care that couldn’t be monitored through time.
Real-time, evidence-based MDT analytics with Vitaly
With the Vitaly reporting feature, you can tell if your healthcare service is operating efficiently and extract the relevant indicators for continuous improvement of processes and quality of care. It enables advanced tracking of core business metrics and KPIs (demographics, cases, time, diagnosis, rescheduled patient rates or other relevant data) based on real-time evidence. Stand-alone and built into the solution analytical module brings all data together and offers more context and flexibility around the data you need to unlock valuable information. The analytics can be further used to improve processes, monitor patient outcomes, recognise medical trends and gain value-based reimbursement.
Why Vitaly in synergy with video collaboration tools is a perfect match for your MDT cross-specialist teams?
- It saves valuable clinical time
- It decreases administration errors and costs of care
- It supports more accurate clinical decisions and offers greater flexibility
- It provides deeper insights into your care service performance.
Above all, having the best of both worlds is proven to improve the quality of patient care through collaboration in all MDT stages, reach standards of care and save the lives of many by getting the best treatment in the shortest time.
Interested in how Vitaly Multidisciplinary Team Meetings solution can improve your existing MDT experience?
References:
1) Soukup T, Gandamihardja TAK, Mcinerney S, Green JSA, Sevdalis N. Do multidisciplinary cancer care teams suffer decision-making fatigue: an observational, longitudinal team improvement study. BMJ Open. 2019;9(5):e027303.