Research
Power Hour Breakout
Lee Steere, RN, CRNI, VA-BC
Unit Leader, IV Therapy Services
Hartford Hospital
BBraun: Consultant (Status: Ongoing); Entrotech LIfe Sciences: Speaker's Bureau (Status: Ongoing); Nexus Medical LLC () : Speaker's Bureau
Today, vascular access clinicians are at risk of becoming extinct or minimized to where they are just inserting PICC lines, many only operating during the day light hours. C-suite executives are under the impression that clinicians can be trained quickly on the proper placement of PIVC's. This leads to a reluctance in budgeting for IV clinicians, especially with RN salaries being such a large percentage of the overall hospital budget. If Chief Financial Officers knew the cost per bed for IV therapy, they would realize the huge impact it has on their overall operating margin. This would result in reallocation of dollars to support VAST's, but very few, if any, understand this actual cost. At Hartford Hospital, the IV Team set out to save and grow the VAST team by using data collected during a comparison study they conducted, which demonstrated that the skilled IV clinician achieved better outcomes then the generalist model. Better outcomes equals cost savings, ranging from better patients satisfaction scores, reduction in supplies to less adverse IV related events. In this session, learn how a small group of experts saved and grew their team in their 869-bed, inner city level one trauma center.