Why the CMO of an Ascension Regional Hospital Likes Wellsheet

Dr. Mario Pulido is an internist by training and much of his clinical practice over the last 15 years or so has been as a hospitalist. As such, discharge planning is something that figures very heavily in how he cares for patients at the hospital.

Now the chief medical officer at Ascension St. Vincent’s in Florida, one of the things that always irked Dr. Pulido is how many EMR companies and other tech firms could not answer a simple question that he had: How could he add an anticipated date of discharge feature so that the first thing in the morning the entire care team could see what his plans were for patients he was caring for?

“I come in, in my practice and I would document on my paper sheet what my plans are for the day, but how do I show the case manager that, how do I show the therapist that to share that information? How do I have a nurse manager who’s going to be helping me get those patients ready and communicate to their family what time of pickup is on Thursday when they’re ready to go home, and how do I do this?” Pulido said in a recent interview.

He wasn’t satisfied with the answers from companies whose basic response was either, “we don’t do that” or that “we don’t have that feature.”

That was until he encountered Wellsheet, which immediately showed him how to add that capability.

“And so that immediately took me, I mean, I’m already better than where I thought we would be from a functionality perspective,” he recalled. “This is already things I’ve been asking about for years and years and nobody’s been able to offer this.”

Based in New York, Wellsheet is an AI-powered workflow solution that helps clinicians make the most out of their EMRs by boosting productivity while reducing burnout. The company’s technology provides the same interface no matter what EMR the clinician is using.

Besides the date of discharge feature, there’s other functionality that has appealed to Dr. Pulido since then. He found that a super user of EMRs reported a 50% reduction in the amount of clicks necessary to get something done.

The super user “specifically actually measured the number of clicks it takes for him to do effective ordering, effective rounding, effective documentation. And he literally represents that work as being reduced by 50%,” Pulido recalled.

And instead of Pulido trying to force the use of Wellsheet’s technology on hospitalists in Ascensions’ Florida hospitals, he found that they themselves are adopting it.

“They’re coming to me and saying, ‘Have you learned about this yet? You should have visibility of this and know where we are with this so we can all be on the same page and roll this out.'” he said.

Currently, four campuses within Ascension’s Florida region are using Wellsheet’s technology in the handoff process. But Pulido wants more.

“What I’ve challenged all four sites to do in the last three months is very kindly politely, really insisted that they use the ADC (anticipated date of discharge) feature because we’re also, really from a national level and a local ministry level, prioritizing the efficiencies of getting throughput in a safe manner” he said.

He added that that date helps him and others to know “that patients that stay in the hospital an extra day or two are going to have more delirium risk, more risk of hospital acquired conditions, more falls, more line sepsis…” and then that might trigger plans for a safe, earlier release.

He added that Wellsheet’s comprehensive technology is very helpful for even hospital nocturnists who are taking care of say 150 patients overnight and may have to make quick, critical decisions that directly have an impact on patient care.

“So how do you quickly get to information that’s meaningful, that’s driving safe care, that is in fact addressing the issue while weighing the risks of your one-time order,” he explained, noting that Wellsheet’s workflow solutions do exactly that.

And the end result of leveraging the right information through Wellsheet?

Happy physicians who are providing safe, effective care without burdening themselves and happier patients who get to go home early, Pulido explained. At the end of the day, solutions like Wellsheet’s are what is desirable rather than the “romantic ideas that sound great, but at the end of the day are not practical because a month later everybody’s tired of entering all these extra clicks and doing things that’s not bettering their practice.”