Banner Baywood mobility program cuts hospital stay length

A new mobility initiative at Banner Baywood Medical Center has resulted in a reduced length of stay for patients and improved outcomes. A team is dedicated to ensuring patients get necessary daily movement.

Sean Wyne, Associate Director of Rehabilitation Services at Banner Baywood Medical Center, joined “Arizona Horizon” to share details on the initiative.

Movement is crucial for positive patient outcomes. The longer a patient lies in bed, the longer they may stay in the hospital and increase their chances for complications.

The MOVE initiative was developed to increase mobility for patients, using a “Bedside Mobility Assessment Tool” with the “BMAT” team, a group of patient transporters who received specialized education in safe patient handling and hands-on mobility training.

“The BMAT is what we call it, originally started out in Baywood is now nationally recognized, assessment tool and its one in which the nurses go and do an assessment on a patient, their basically looking how the patient moves when they get in and out of bed,” Wyne said.

The nurses are looking to see if the patients sit up at the edge of the bed or get up and walk around. The hospital has seen a decrease in length of stay by about two days for some patients. In total, nearly 40,000 patients have benefited from the mobility initiative since its inception.

“It initially started as a Banner system initiative in which we take patients that come into our hospitals that are independent, we want to make sure they leave us independently,” Wyne said.

He says the initiative started in January of 2022 and then expanded to look at a broader range of patients, specifically at the Banner Baywood location in eastern Mesa. There is a wide range of faculty working on the initiative as well, transporters, nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and occupational therapists.