The Ultimate Boss

The first day of class in high school, my chemistry teacher walked silently into the room after we were seated, took a dollar out of his pocket, and put it in a glass jar on the podium. I was confused until he explained that his actions represented what we did every day. As his students, we were the source of his paycheck and were ultimately his boss. He ran the classroom, but we had a voice.

I was reminded of this experience last week when I read an interview in Healthcare Informatics between Rasu B. Shrestha, M.D., and HCI Editor-in-Chief Mark Hagland about the 2012 Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) annual conference. Although the article was a great overview of some of the top trends and RSNA discussion topics, what really stuck with me and prompted the dollar-in-the-jar memory was Dr. Shrestha’s last statement: “Above all, you have to look at what is needed to become patient-centric, and to enable the clinician workflow that can make that a reality.”

Looking at a provider’s workflow and thinking “What can we change here to improve the patient experience?” is something I do on a daily basis. Communication is a large component of any clinician’s workflow; it takes time to gather information about a patient from the EMR, colleagues, lab and imaging test results, verbal and text-based conversations, and personal observations…. Finding solutions that can make these tasks more efficient is a win. Providers run the treatment plans, but saving a little time on communications means having more time to listen to the voice of the ultimate boss – the patient.

mHealth and Mobile Strategies - The Time Has Come!

With HIMSS in full swing, it’s an invigorating week for organizations concerned with healthcare IT. As expected, mobile health—mHealth—initiatives are front and center in light of the ubiquity of smartphones, tablets, and the many other portable devices in use today across healthcare organizations.

On Monday, Fierce Mobile Healthcare’s Editor Sara Jackson wrote an article discussing whether chief mobility officers are needed in hospitals given the organizational risks of sensitive data floating around on mobile devices. While the hospitals she talked to were evenly divided on the topic, the fact that this is something on people’s minds is telling.

So given the importance of securing electronic Protected Health Information (ePHI), has your hospital taken the steps needed to create a documented mobile strategy?

This task has been on the rainy day list for hospitals for far too long. There are a great deal of risks associated with not having this approach well defined, particularly when it comes to critical staff messages, such as code calls, patient lab results, consult requests, and more. Not having the proper technology in place could mean a lack of information security and message traceability, especially in the case of unencrypted texting among staff (something the Joint Commission frowns upon, particularly for orders).

It’s time for CIOs, CMIOs, and others to outline a strategy on mobile devices and enforce it. This strategy should include plans for supporting and messaging to the many different devices in use at hospitals, including smartphones, tablets, traditional cell phones, voice badges, pagers, Wi-Fi phones, etc. Other areas should include whether devices are to run mostly on Wi-Fi or cellular networks—or a combination of the two. Furthermore, IT teams will have to decide which types of devices are needed for which functions/jobs. These considerations should tie to how a clear mobile strategy can improve staff workflow for the good of everyone’s productivity and patient safety. For example, doctors use smartphones, nurses use Wi-Fi phones, housekeeping has pagers, etc.

Thoughts? Comments?

Speech Recognition Enhances Mobility

We’ve noticed an interesting trend lately as hospital call centers have increasingly come to us to replace their legacy operator console systems. Many want to add superior speech recognition to their communications platform. This technology has come a long way.

Doctors, specialists, nurses and other members of their care teams truly recognize the value of being able to reach each other quickly, no matter where they are. Just think—mobile caregivers might not have everyone’s contact info and preferences in their heads or in their contact lists, so the ability to call into the on-call directory, tell the system a name or department, then quickly get connected, can help make these busy people’s lives “hands-free” and “hassle-free.”

A cardiologist can call the hospital from her office, a clinic, or even from her car, ask for a colleague by name and within seconds—without involving the call-center staff—reach the patient’s on-duty nurse, a specialist, or their GP. The nurse can reach any doctor or their on-call back-up without searching. He or she can just call the speech system, ask for the doctor or specialty and the speech engine quickly makes the connection.

These are great new use cases. Let us know how you’re using speech technology in your hospital. What successes and challenges have you experienced?

Communications Technology Within Reach

Lately we’ve been seeing a lot of smaller hospitals looking at the options for communications technology because they want to better coordinate care for their patients. It’s no secret that better communications, particularly during critical situations, are essential to improved care and safety. In fact, the Joint Commission continually finds in its annual studies that poor communication is the leading cause of sentinel events. But smaller hospitals have historically had challenges finding technology that fits their bed size.

The good news is that rock-solid healthcare communications technology is very much within reach for smaller hospitals today. This not only includes solutions for automating even small call center operations, but also goes far beyond into delivering important communications from staff or even monitoring systems to nurses and doctors who are always on the move.

Here’s a sampling. Embracing Web-based on-call scheduling and employee directories means everyone can access the latest contact information easily. Sending nurse call and patient monitoring system alerts straight to nurses’ mobile devices means less walk time and faster response. Delivering urgent code call or other notifications to clinicians’ smartphones and tablets (or any other device) means greater efficiency in providing informed patient care.

Think of a case like a heart attack patient or car crash victim coming into a rural or community hospital. Making sure the right staff members are contacted quickly is vital, especially when things happen in the middle of the night and staff are home, perhaps some distance from the hospital. Having an up-to-the-minute on-call calendar, the right contact information, and the ability to message quickly to doctors and nurses (likely on smartphones) all plays a role in providing good care.

As always, I’d love to hear your comments.