Helping Busy Physicians Get in Touch (Finally!)

It’s very satisfying as a company to work on developing a new solution that so many healthcare organizations really see a need for. We love doing something that helps people perform their jobs better and take a little hassle out of their days. Actually, a lot of hassle, from what we hear.

Here’s the scoop. Given the importance of communications in patient care, there’s a pretty big disconnect going on in hospitals. Doctors need to talk to one another, and nurses often have questions for doctors. The problem is with busy schedules, clinicians have a tough time actually connecting when needed. Sometimes this means patient care suffers.

We were thrilled to announce Amcom Care Connect this week, which helps these important conversations happen in a timely manner. Just as importantly, the solution incorporates doctors’ preferences on how they wish to be contacted. So factors such as time and day, caller, and urgency help route requests to the right person. Maybe that’s the ‘on-call cardiologist.’ Maybe that’s a specific person who has specified calls from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. should go to an iPhone. But after 4 p.m., urgent calls should go to the on-call physician instead.

It made a lot of sense for us to develop this technology. Not only was there significant demand for it, but we were also able to leverage customer data that is typically already in our system. This is through integration with existing Web-based directory and on-call calendars.

It’s actually simple to use. Dr. One has an urgent need for a consult. She calls the local Amcom Care Connect phone number and answers a few short questions. The system sees that Dr. Two is on-call and wishes to get urgent messages on his Android. The call is connected and no time is wasted. This call and all others are saved for several years to create an effective audit trail.

See how it works in this short video.

We’ve already had a tremendous response to this product. As always, we’d love to hear your comments as well.