CiLN Award 2020 finalist – Victoria Brevoort

FEATURE – eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

Victoria Brevoort, clinical systems manager, Ryman Healthcare (nursing)

Judge’s comment

“Victoria’s nomination demonstrates her close connection and understanding of the consumers and communities she works alongside. Her breadth of involvement and work spans across information management, technical development, analytics and the recent psychosocial impact of the pandemic on their consumers. 

“She is endorsed for her whole of system approach beyond her organisation in connecting her consumers and families. She demonstrates clear leadership across quality improvement initiatives, utilising the data collected to benefit the health outcomes of the communities involved.”

Nominator quote
 
“Victoria has the drive and passion to not just think about Ryman, but the greater community and is keen to not only set the standard with a 'can-do' attitude, but share knowledge that can benefit all.

“She is realistic and also competent in both IT and clinical matters.”

Profile

Victoria is a registered nurse with a Master of Nursing. She is in charge of the Operations Clinical Systems team of nurses, user interface designers and test analysts at Ryman Healthcare and works collaboratively with the Information Technology development team. 

Victoria has been instrumental in providing the clinical context in the development of Ryman's bespoke patient management digital care planning application, myRyman Care. This has included the creation of online assessments; clinical care event workflows; and smart links between various clinical processes and systems to reduce error and increase ease of use for care staff.

myRyman was deployed to 3,800 care centre residents and has been overseen by Victoria and the  IT team since implementation four years ago.

She is now embarking on a project that will enable any of the 11,700 independent Ryman residents to develop their own Lifestyle Plan to support them to take charge of their own health and wellbeing.

Pandemic response 

In response to Covid-19, Victoria helped to deliver and implement a telehealth solution across the country, which included the deployment of Zoom onto 3,800 care centre room devices. 

She identified the impact of the lockdown on residents, resulting in interventions being implemented via Zoom to counteract deconditioning for residents in isolation and to address psychosocial wellbeing concerns.

She helped secure a nationwide 24/7 contract that would ensure that every nurse would be able to access a medical professional remotely regardless of the Covid-19 status in the country and established the rules and parameters for user interaction within myRyman as a form of contact tracing. 

The Ryman Covid-19 screening tool was also created in digital format and this enabled real time reporting in PowerBI for both screening of at-risk individuals and contact tracing if required. These reports were used by the senior Incident Management Team daily and supported decisions around precautionary isolation.

Using data to support clinical care

The plethora of data that is now available through all of the clinical IT systems that 
Victoria oversees (VCare; myRyman Care; 1CHART; interRAI and others) enables PowerBI reports to be created to support fast identification of either risk to individuals, groups or areas for improvement. 

Victoria runs reports that highlight these areas and enable staff to see cross indicator data for the first time. She is a humble achiever who makes things happen by bringing people together, providing the vision and then working hard alongside them to deliver.  

Through this process she has identified trends between various indicators such as a correlation between falls and distressed behaviour and falls and infections. This has enabled Victoria and her team to work with village teams to put additional interventions into place to further reduce risk.

Because of this support there have been significant trending down of clinical risk such as falls in dementia care area lounges; infections in all areas and distressed behaviour.

Victoria has a high level of accountability when it comes to clinical safety and quality of life outcomes. She reports at senior level and is constantly working on projects to further improve quality of care and quality of life. 

Applying clinical expertise

Victoria works with the IT team to ensure that all Ryman clinical systems are interconnected in some way.

She sits on the Ryman Medication Advisory Committee and has been an active participant in influencing improved charting and administration practice and reducing error. 

Victoria understands the connections between the systems and is the clinical subject matter expert who collaborates with the technology experts to ensure the organisation has seamless connections, making things easier for the nurse-on-the-floor. 

This profile is an edited version of the nomination/s.

Click here to vote for the winner of the Clinical Informatics Leadership Award 2020.

If you would like to provide feedback on the above feature article please contact the editor Rebecca McBeth.

Read more CiLN Award 2020 finalists:

Karen Blake
Lara Hopley

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