Emergency Notification + Mobility = Better Response and Care

While the need to rally teams quickly in your hospital is certainly not new, there are an increasing number of ways to reach the right people when time is of the essence. Although pagers were once the standard for simultaneous communications, now staff can specify a wide range of devices on which they can be contacted.

For example, if you have a critical code, such as when a heart attack patient arrives, you probably have to let many people know that they will play a role in the very near future. The Cath Lab, cardiologists, nurses, lab technicians, and more can receive the appropriate message and respond with their availability. This is the key – being able to track responses easily and let alternate staff know if someone can’t make it. All of this can happen using common communications devices and systems such as smartphones, pagers, email, desk phones, and others. Logging all correspondence throughout the process also comes in handy when the Joint Commission asks for audit trails.

Best of all, better communications during emergencies helps improve patient care as staff focus more on doing their jobs and less on making multiple phone calls. Case in point, Amcom customer Goshen General Hospital in Indiana reduced its average time for treating heart attack patients (the “door-to-balloon time”) from 129 minutes to 68 minutes – a 47 percent reduction.

See for yourself how it all works in this video.

Drop us a line with your thoughts on emergency notification procedures.