Using the Rothman Index to impact the patient journey

August 23, 2024 (length: 3 minutes 59 seconds)
Watch the video here.

TRANSCRIPT

A tale of two journeys. Meet Florence, a 74-year-old grandmother preparing for routine surgery at a cutting-edge hospital. She looks forward to a speedy recovery and spending time with her grandchildren in a few days. But as with any recovery, things don’t always go as planned and can go down a different path with unthinkable outcomes.

Let’s explore two possible journeys Florence might take.

Florence’s surgery goes smoothly. Her care team follows all the right protocols with superior attention and expertise. But on post-op day one, Florence becomes confused and agitated. Her vital signs are largely unchanged, aside from some mild hypertension, nothing too concerning. On post-op day two, her pulse is thready, her skin a little mottled, and her breathing becomes labored. Yet her vitals remain mostly normal, except for a low-grade temperature and slight hypertension. Then, day three arrives and things take a turn for the worse.

She develops tachypnea, is tachycardic, with an elevated temperature. Her systolic blood pressure drops to 65, stops urinating, and becomes unresponsive. She is started on vasopressors and immediately transferred to the ICU. But despite urgent intervention, she develops multi-system organ failure and tragically passes. While this is a worst-case scenario, stories like this happen far too often. Florence’s condition did not raise immediate alarms, most likely due to her steady vitals and the subtlety of her symptoms.

What if she chose another hospital with more advanced AI technology? Could her outcome have been different?

This time, Florence chooses a hospital equipped with Spacelab’s advanced AI technology, the Rothman Index. After her routine surgery, clinicians assess and log even the smallest changes to her condition in the EMR. The technology continuously analyzes 26 data points, including these assessments, her streaming vital signs, and lab results to calculate a real-time acuity score that provides her care team with a reliable prediction of where her condition might be headed in the future.

On post-op day one, the system detects subtle changes and raises a Rothman Index medium warning alert. Her care team takes notice and sees something is clearly wrong with her. They drill down into the details and see she failed her neurological and psychosocial assessments. She is weak, with a very unsteady gait, and she fell out of bed. These details give her care team a more comprehensive view of her overall health status, which they leverage to quickly adjust her care plan. Her condition subtly and gradually worsens over the next day, and the Rothman Index triggers a high warning alert. Her care team digs down again into the details of the trending score. Recognizing the risk of sepsis, her team runs further diagnostics and proactively transfers her to the ICU. With early intervention, Florence recovers and returns home to her family with a big smile and a warm hug for her grandchildren.

By utilizing the Rothman Index, her care team was able to see her subtle deterioration early, which gave them the opportunity to intervene and make changes to her care plan before she became critical. This scenario illustrates the transformative potential of Spacelab’s Rothman Index on patient care. By integrating seamlessly into the EMR, this technology provides real-time, comprehensive insights that empower care teams to make clinical judgments and care decisions confidently before it becomes critical.