King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Center Embraces Digital Healthcare Transformation

King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Centre (KFSH&RC) is a tertiary care organization in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia with over 1,800 hospital beds and 13,000 staff members. As of 2018, KFSH&RC attended to 21,000 operating room cases, 95,000 emergency visits and over 1.3 million outpatient visits. Their specialized care in neurology, cardiology, oncology and other areas sets the research center apart as a global leader in tertiary care.

Despite this, like so many healthcare organizations worldwide—including paperless facilities— KFSH&RC was battling data latency challenges. Delays in data input in the EHR can compromise care, decrease responsiveness to patient needs, hinder clinical decision support, and as a result, negatively impact patient experience.

KFSH&RC recognized that in order to implement a solution that would successfully combat these challenges, identifying the right technology to address care coordination was critical. With this in mind, the organization created a smart room in one of their facilities to improve patient experience and outcomes, using it as a model to help pave the way for healthcare transformation through innovation.

Providing Smart, State-of-the-Art Care

To start, they convened a multidisciplinary team—including physicians and nurses; staff from health informatics, application delivery, integration and IT; and vendors—to ensure diverse input in the planning and implementation phases. They designed their smart room with full EHR integration, bedside medical devices, and other high-tech tools to support patient engagement and personal care education.

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The team piloted the smart room in the King Abdulla Center Oncology and Liver Disease (KACOLD) building, which includes 210 inpatient beds, 65 intensive care units, 96 infusion bays and 13 operating rooms . The KACOLD, with fully integrated smart room functionality, underwent a phased opening from June 2017 to January 2018. Comparing the KACOLD to the main hospital within KFSH&RC, the team reports impressive results:

• 10% improved communication with medical teams; patient satisfaction to nurse call response was 9.65, compared to 6.84 in the main facility (scale of 1 to 10)
• Improved vital sign entry, from 47 minutes to less than one minute
• Decreased length of stay, from 33 days to 30 days
• Improved pain management, with an average of 8.63; the main facility averaged 6.88

Additionally, three of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement Quadruple Aims were achieved by improving patient experience, user experience and health outcomes—furthering the organization on their way to healthcare transformation.

HIMSS Davies Award of Excellence

The HIMSS Davies Award of Excellence recognizes the thoughtful application of health information and technology to substantially improve clinical care delivery, patient outcomes and population health around the world. The Davies Awards program promotes HIMSS’s vision and mission by recognizing and sharing use cases, model practices and lessons learned on how to improve health and wellness through the power of information and technology.

“Applying contextually aware room design and workflow design processes, built around information and technology enhancements for communication and care delivery, KFSH&RC has significantly improved outcomes for oncology and liver disease patients while reducing adverse events,” said Jonathan French, CPHIMS, SHIMSS, senior director of quality and patient safety initiatives at HIMSS. “Their thoughtful application of technology to enhance workflow into the build of the new King Abdullah facility serves as a blueprint for creating an environment that makes it easier to deliver the best quality of care to the right patient at the right time. HIMSS is proud to recognize KFSH&RC as a Davies Award of Excellence recipient.”

“This HIMSS Davies Award of Excellence for KFSH&RC shows the maturity and interoperability of our integrated clinical information system since its inception over 17 years ago,” stated Majed Al Fayad, MD, MMM, chief executive officer at KFSH&RC. “To reach this level of excellence, and more importantly, to be able to share our lessons with the wider healthcare community, is truly an enterprise achievement and speaks to the dedication, usage and adoption of technology by our staff.”

Learn From Award-Winning Healthcare Organizations

See the full list of 2019 Davies Award winners.

More About the HIMSS Davies Awards

Updated March 6, 2020