SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR AUTOMATIC DATA COLLECTION OF PHYSICIAN AND PATIENT INTERACTION TIME

Abstract

A system and method for automatic capturing of physician and patient interaction time and location information during provision of medical services by a physician during an appointment with a patient in hospitals, offices or clinics. Capturing total interaction time facilitates verifiable physician reimbursement by third-party payers. RF beacon technology based on the Bluetooth Low Energy devices and communications protocol may be utilized for personnel and location identification. The use of store-and-forward communications enable both reliable interaction-tracking packet data communications to an external host IT system in online offices, and alternatively the queuing of all data for transmission to an off-line host computer.

Claims

1. A method for recording patient interaction time, comprising the steps of: associating a beacon receiver with a patient and coupling the beacon receiver to the patient; associating a plurality of beacon tags with each of a physician, a staff and a location to be used during a patient interaction; each of the beacon tags configured to broadcast a beacon signal including a unique identifier, according to a selected time interval; logging beacon signals received by the beacon receiver from the beacon tags associated with the physician, the staff, the location and/or the equipment identifiers during a patient interaction in an interaction log; and transmitting the interaction log to a host computer.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the beacon receiver and each of the beacon tags utilize Bluetooth Low Energy communication protocol.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the transmission of the interaction log is performed at an end of the patient interaction.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the transmission of the interaction log is performed during the patient interaction.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the transmission of the interaction log is performed upon return of the beacon receiver to a cradle configured for communication with the beacon receiver and electrical charging of the beacon receiver.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the cradle communication with the beacon receiver is via Bluetooth Low Energy communications protocol and the electrical charging of the beacon receiver is wireless.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the transmission of the interaction log is performed utilizing a store-and-forward packet data transmission protocol.

8. A system for automatically recording the total length of continuous or discontinuous interaction time between a physician and a patient during a patient appointment, wherein interaction time is defined as the time period during which both are in continuous visual or speaking proximity in a contact location, and the total interaction time is recorded in either a physician record or a patient record.

9. The system of claim 8 wherein the contact location is also recorded in either a physician meeting record or a patient meeting record.

10. The system of claim 8 wherein the contact location is selected from the group consisting of physician's office, physician's home, patient's office, patient's home, hospice, nursing home, a conference room, an operating room, or either a patient examining room or a patient treatment room in a clinic or hospital, or at an accident site.

11. The system of claim 8 wherein the contact location is within a single room or a predefined area within a larger room.

12. The system of claim 8 wherein the contact location may change as various healthcare services are rendered during the patient appointment.

13. A method for automatically recording the total length of contact time between a physician and a patient during an encounter comprising: means for automatic identification of both the uniquely identified physician and the patient and any optional physician staff or optional patient chaperone present when both the physician and the patient are in a contact location; means for measuring and recording the length of each continuous contact time segment when each of the physician and the patient and any optional physician staff or optional patient optional chaperone are present within said contact location; and means for recording the length of each continuous contact time segment length and contact location and any optional physician staff or optional patient chaperone present in a physician's and/or a patient's record.

14. The method of claim 13 wherein the automatic identification means for identifying the physician comprises a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacon tag comprising a unique identifier (UUID).

15. The method of claim 13 wherein the automatic identification means for identifying any optional physician staff comprises a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacon tag comprising a unique identifier (UUID).

16. The method of claim 13 wherein the automatic identification means for identifying any optional patient chaperone comprises a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacon tag comprising a unique identifier (UUID).

17. The method of claim 14 wherein a physical carrier for the uniquely encoded Bluetooth Low Energy beacon tag is selected from the group consisting of a wearable identification badge, a self-adhesive label or a wristband.

18. The method of claim 15 wherein a physical carrier for the uniquely encoded Bluetooth Low Energy beacon tag is selected from the group consisting of a wearable identification badge, a self-adhesive label or a wristband.

19. The method of claim 16 wherein a physical carrier for the uniquely encoded Bluetooth Low Energy beacon tag is selected from the group consisting of a wearable identification badge, a self-adhesive label or a wristband.

20. The method of claim 13 wherein the automatic identification means for identifying the patient comprises a Bluetooth Low Energy beacon tag reader comprising a unique identifier for the patient.

Description

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES

[0058] The accompanying drawings, which are incorporated in and constitute a part of this specification, illustrate embodiments of the invention and, together with a general description of the invention given above, and the detailed description of the embodiments given below, serve to explain the principles of the invention.

[0059] FIG. 1 is a representation of a physician examining a patient in an examination room, according to an exemplary embodiment.

[0060] FIG. 2 shows a block diagram of an exemplary beacon receiver.

[0061] FIG. 3 shows a block diagram of a beacon receiver placed in an exemplary charging and communications cradle.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

[0062] In FIG. 1, a patient 10 is examined by a physician 20 in examination room 100 (only 3 walls of the examination room are shown). If necessary, one or more staff members 30 is in attendance. Optionally, one or more chaperones 40 such as parents or a spouse may also be in attendance with the patient 10.

[0063] The physician 20 may be, for example, a Doctor of Medicine (MD), Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (DO), Physician's Assistant (PA) or Nurse Practitioner (NP), Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) or other licensed practitioner whose services can be submitted for reimbursement to a third-party payer such as an insurance company. The physician 20 may be a primary care Physician and the patient 10 may be a patient of the primary care Physician.

[0064] Physician 20 is wearing a unique beacon tag 25, and also each attending staff member 30 is wearing a unique beacon tag 35. Any optional patient chaperone 40 attending is wearing a unique visitor beacon tag 45. Each beacon tag advertises a unique ID number (UUID), associated with the identification of the person wearing it or the object or location identified.

[0065] The examination room 100 also has beacon tag 105 advertising a unique ID associated with its treatment location which may be associated with its diagnostic or therapeutic function. Note that any room may have multiple beacon tags depending on its size, each with unique UUIDs. There may be also beacon receiver protocols for the reading of multiple location beacon tags in order to triangulate patient position within the room or building.

[0066] One skilled in the art will appreciate that the examination room 100 described herein is a generic representation of a contact location such as a physician's office, a physician's home, a patient's office, a patient's home, a hospice, a nursing home, a conference room, an operating room, or either a patient examining room or a patient treatment room in a clinic, an accident site, or any other location where it is beneficial to record interaction time between a caregiver and a patient.

[0067] Additionally, any medical device 120 (e.g. an EKG instrument) present optionally may have a beacon tag 125 advertising a unique ID associated with this device which is associated with the diagnostic or therapeutic function of medical device 120.

[0068] Patient 10, however, wears beacon receiver 15 temporarily assigned by the physician's receptionist for the duration of the patient appointment. Beacon receiver 15 receives and records the advertised UUIDs from all beacon tags in proximity to the patient 10. In FIG. 1, patient examining room 100 example comprises personnel beacon tags 25, 35 and 45; location beacon tag 105; and medical instrument beacon tag 125. Note that the beacon receiver 15 may also receive and report stray beacon tag signals from other unassociated nearby personnel and locations.

[0069] FIG. 2 shows a block diagram of the battery-powered beacon receiver 15. The beacon receiver 15 comprises a memory 200; a low power microcontroller 300 with real-time clock 310 either as an internal or externally attached module; a Bluetooth Low Energy RF interface module 320; and a 2.4 GHz antenna 330. Through antenna 330 the entire beacon receiver 15 is in communications, for example via 2.4 GHz BLE communications 400, with an external host IT system 500.

[0070] Note that the beacon receiver 15 may be provided without a wearer accessible on-off switch, to prevent accidental or deliberate nonrecording during part of a patient appointment. The beacon receiver power system in FIG. 2 is comprised of wireless power receiver module 340 connected with power management module 350 and rechargeable battery 360. Power management module 350 controls both the external charging by 340 of rechargeable battery 360 and the internal supply of DC power to the rest of the beacon receiver 15 electronics comprising beacon receiver modules 200, 300, 310, 320 and 330.

[0071] At regular recording intervals the beacon receiver 15 records the UUIDs of all tags heard during that interval on an interval beacon list 210 in memory 200. The interval beacon list of beacon UUIDs 210 may change in the current recording interval from that of the prior recording interval. One cause may be personnel entering and leaving the treatment location. Another cause may be the patient moving between locations, such as between a patient examining room and a laboratory for a blood draw. In each time interval that the interval beacon list 210 changes, an event message packet is created with a header comprising a timestamp from real-time clock 310 and an incremented packet sequence number. Each event message packet is queued in packet queue 220 for subsequent transmission to an external host IT system 500. An entry for that packet sequence number is also made on the unreceived packet number list 230.

[0072] Each event message packet in packet queue 220 comprises a header and data. The packet data comprises the UUIDs of all beacons on interval beacon list 210 for that recoding interval. Any beacon tags which were received multiple times during the recording interval are consolidated to a single entry. The data may optionally comprise telemetry messages received as part of the beacon receiver data or through additional query and response by the beacon receiver.

[0073] The microcontroller 300 manages the store-and-forward communication protocol for transmission of the packets in packet queue 220 in the nominal order identified on unreceived packet number list 230. Once the 1.sup.st packet is queued, the microcontroller 300 causes a query to determine if RF bidirectional communications 400 to the host IT system 500 is active. If communications are available, data transmission starts with the lowest number packet on the unreceived packet number list 230.

[0074] If successful receipt of the packet sequence number is acknowledged by a RECEIVED message from the host IT system 500, then that packet number is deleted from the unreceived packet number list 230 and the packet itself is deleted from the packet queue 220.

[0075] If a RESEND request is received from host IT system 500, either for a single packet sequence number or a range of packet sequence numbers (typically caused by a short dropout or noise burst in communications), then that single packet or any unreceived packets in the requested packet number range are retransmitted to the host IT system 500 until successfully received and acknowledged, or that packet is declared corrupted by the host IT system after a specified number of attempts, N, in which case that packet is deleted from the unreceived packet number list 230 and the packet itself is deleted from the packet queue 220.

[0076] The process continues until all uncorrupted packets in the patient appointment message stream have been sent and the unreceived packet list and packet queue are both empty.

[0077] When the patient returns the beacon receiver 15 to the physician's receptionist, the beacon receiver 15 is simply placed in cradle 600 shown in FIG. 3. The cradle 600 comprises a BLE transceiver 620 functionally similar to the system shown in FIG. 2, and a wireless power supply 650 with charging antenna 660 for the rechargeable battery 360 in beacon receiver 15, and external wired or wireless communications port 630 to either optional online host IT system 500 and/or optional offline host computer.

[0078] External power 640 is used to support wireless power charging system 650 and BLE transceiver 620. If communications port 630 is an Ethernet connection, then power-over-Ethernet optionally may be utilized in place of external power 640 to support the wireless power charging system 650 which uses wireless power antenna 660. Charging of the beacon receiver 15 rechargeable battery 360 takes place independently of any store-and-forward packet communications of the patient appointment message stream from beacon receiver 15.

[0079] If online communications of the patient appointment message stream to an existing host IT system 500 was not complete prior to the beacon receiver 15 being placed in cradle 600, then packet communication continues with the host IT system 500 until completed, but now through BLE antenna 610 connected to the cradle BLE transceiver 620. In this manner store-and-forward communications of all event packets of the patient appointment message stream stored in 220 is assured.

[0080] Alternatively, communications and/or charging between the beacon receiver 15 and the cradle 600 may be via electrical contacts of the devices that mate upon insertion of the beacon receiver 15 into the cradle 600.

[0081] The data collection systems specified in this invention also works equally well in offline environments where no online communication is available. If no online communication of the patient appointment message data stream was feasible when the beacon receiver 15 is placed in cradle 600, the BLE transceiver 620 now forwards that entire patient appointment message stream queued in 220 directly to an offline host computer 700. This is performed using wired or wireless communications port 630 and utilizing the same store-and-forward packet data transmission protocol as would be used with an online host IT system 500.

[0082] Once all event packets of the patient appointment message stream have been transmitted to either online host IT system 500 and/or offline host computer 700 the beacon receiver 15 resets and is now available for assignment to another patient, if a minimum level of rechargeable battery 360 charge is indicated by the beacon receiver 15.

[0083] One skilled in the art will recognize that the present inventions enable collection of detailed patient appointment interaction data which facilitates verifiable billing in a range of billing protocols acceptable to various third-party payers, freeing the physician and/or their staff from time consuming administrative procedures that are themselves unbillable time.

[0084] The collected data may be further utilized to automate generation of patient records, such as an Electronic Medical Record or an Electronic Healthcare Record.

[0085] Where in the foregoing description reference has been made to ratios, integers, components or modules having known equivalents then such equivalents are herein incorporated as if individually set forth.

[0086] While the present invention has been illustrated by the description of the embodiments thereof, and while the embodiments have been described in considerable detail, it is not the intention of the applicant to restrict or in any way limit the scope of the appended claims to such detail. Additional advantages and modifications will readily appear to those skilled in the art. Therefore, the invention in its broader aspects is not limited to the specific details, representative apparatus, methods, and illustrative examples shown and described. Accordingly, departures may be made from such details without departure from the spirit or scope of applicant's general inventive concept. Further, it is to be appreciated that improvements and/or modifications may be made thereto without departing from the scope or spirit of the present invention as defined by the following claims.