Yale New Haven improves efficiencies in clinical product evaluation process

Challenge

Many forward-thinking health systems, like Yale New Haven Health (YNHH), were already doing a lot of the right work. They fell into the minority group of AMCs that was already investing time and resources to compile and analyze clinical evidence. The clinical review was conducted by nursing or another clinical member of the New Technology Committee.

The committee, a multi-disciplinary group which includes nurses, physicians, contracting, reimbursement, and materials management, is coordinated by members of the YNHH Corporate Supply Chain Department as well as the clinical nurse researcher. The committee most commonly received requests for the Heart and Vascular Center and operating room devices.

However, to include all the components of a proper clinical evidence review, the YNHH clinical nurse researcher routinely accessed multiple websites and search engines which were difficult and time consuming to navigate. The information was retrievable but at the expense of time and intense labor. With compiling research being such an arduous process, Yale’s clinical nurse researchers and clinical supply chain team members had limited capacity. This restricted bandwidth coupled with an increasingly high volume of new technology requests meant that YNHH’s existing process was just not scalable.

Solution

The committee and team members were aligned about the need for an evidenced-based approach and understood the power of being armed with a full understanding of clinical outcomes, the market landscape, and product use cases but they needed an easier way to access this information to be more impactful, much faster. Acknowledging the need for change, the New Technology Committee reviewed its process and incorporated various process improvements aimed at increasing output and decreasing processing time.

To streamline the clinical review process, YNHH began seeking out a technology solution to help increase their team’s efficiency, keep physician customers happier, and ensure that decisions were both best for patients and margins. The clinical nurse researcher evaluated various applications that assist with this type of clinical review. After systematic investigation, YNHH chose Lumere’s web-based research solution.

Impact

Lumere’s solution analyzes hundreds of thousands of data points and peer-reviewed literature to support the evaluation of any clinical product or device and supports the development of guidelines and best practices for device utilization. The database currently includes over 30,000 medical devices and clinical products.

The New Technology Committee now employs Lumere as the sole source of clinical evidence because it provides clinical nurse researchers, supply chain personnel, and clinicians (including physician requesters) with on-demand access to all of the necessary information for a thorough clinical review. Clinical nurse researchers estimated that the time savings were on average about 50% per new product evaluation. Eliminating the frustrating search of multiple sites was a major win, but even more importantly, the team feels more confident that research is comprehensive and up-to-date. The committee was very pleased that Lumere’s research exceeds the very high standards that the team had already set.

This was critical because the team didn’t want to expedite at the expense of accuracy or completeness. In addition to being happier with a faster turnaround time for their requests, many physicians have commented that the reference list provided through the use of Lumere is extensive enough for a comprehensive, integrated literature review worthy of journal publication.