Mobile messaging has permeated a variety of industries, offering anyone with access to a smartphone the opportunity to quickly and easily communicate across their organization in an accessible and familiar manner. For an industry as demanding and fast-paced as healthcare, mobile messaging has emerged as a particularly valuable tool.
The digital world is constantly evolving and healthcare technology is no different. With reports of some hospital doctors visiting up to 50 patients a day, clinicians are busier than ever. As a result, mobile messaging has become a popular way of communicating within healthcare organizations, as it offers a quick, accessible, and familiar solution that anyone with access to a smartphone can utilize.
Patient care requires fast-paced, asynchronous collaboration that ensures quick responses for life-saving decisions. By Galina Datskovsky, CEO of Vaporstream
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It seems every week there’s another study documenting the problems physicians have with healthcare IT. The findings invariably are consistent with what the AMA has been saying for the past several years — physicians overwhelmingly dislike EHR systems’ poor usability and interoperability, and resent the extra time they have to spend at the keyboard.
Frequent alarms from medical technology are overloading physicians and leading to situations that could put patients at risk. By Katie Wike, contributing writer
SUNY Upstate Medical University wanted to improve their healthcare call center performance and reduce caller wait times, shorten the time spent on each call, lower the call center’s abandonment rates, and provide a better caller and patient experience.
Healthcare is built on sacred and trusted relationships between patients and their clinicians. As medicine has moved into the 21st century, we’ve lost our focus on patients’ narratives and knowing one another’s stories as care team members. As a result, we have lost human connections and have created a broken healthcare delivery system that leaves patients and families frustrated and nurses and physicians burned out.
System standards for optimal communication in healthcare are essential to allowing human connection to flourish. And just what are they? They are policies, processes, guidelines, and even unwritten norms that govern how communication should take place in various situations.
As I was going through the metal detector at the airport, I tossed my pager in the bin. The security official looked at me and said, “You work in healthcare, don’t you?” I asked, “Why do you say that?” She said, “No one else uses pagers except for people in healthcare.” Her comment struck me; I thought, Wow. She is totally right.
“The number one problem with communication in healthcare is that people ask things like, ‘is there blood in your urine?’ Patients say no, because they think they’re supposed to see literal blood. Doctors need to ask this in a much simpler way, such as, ‘Is your urine any color other than clear or pale yellow?’ We don’t like to talk about gross things. That’s something that happened with my husband, Fred. They just checked the box and ruled out cancer. He had orange urine for a year. But he didn’t know that meant blood in his urine. He made the assumption that he wasn’t drinking enough water. He knew his urine could get darker if he was dehydrated or if he ate different things.”
“I’m bringing a patient up,” says Mark Frye, a nurse in the PACU. “Ted Jones, 33 years old. He came in through the ED. We believe he was in a motor vehicle collision. He has an open compound fracture of the left femur with external repair. He remains unresponsive with a head injury of unknown cause.
Beginning in the 1960s, pager-like systems were put to use and quickly became the industry standard for sending messages. Over the last few decades, the way hospitals communicate sensitive information has evolved, and their technology needs have changed to secure Protected Health Information (PHI) in accordance with HIPAA rules. In light of this, hospitals are now searching for secure communication systems that are also more robust.
Healthcare organizations strive to provide the best care for their patients. Automating the process of notifying the appropriate medical staff about a patient’s needs is key to providing appropriate and timely care.
Many industry leaders championed a free market approach to healthcare during the 12th Annual World Health Care Congress last week. Here are a few key reasons why I don’t think this model is “the fix” our industry so desperately needs.
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Vocera Communications, Inc. (NYSE:VCRA), the leading provider of intelligent, real-time communication and collaboration solutions for mission-critical mobile environments, celebrates its 15-year anniversary this week.
