Hospitals Continue to Turn to Smartphone Communications in Lieu of Pagers

While it’s hardly news that smartphones are continuing to make inroads in hospitals, many of the stories focus on organizations incorporating these devices alongside existing communications tools like pagers, Wi-Fi phones and the like. But at Froedtert and the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, the team is considering going full-force with smartphones and retiring their pagers.

WUWM 89.7 FM - Milwaukee Public Radio recently did an article on this organization’s use of smartphone messaging and the importance of closed-loop communications. They highlight their ability to coordinate care faster while adhering to security steps for messages and devices.

Check out the article.

Learn about Amcom’s smartphone communication capabilities.

Any comments about what’s new with smartphone use at your healthcare organization?

Better HCAHPS with Smarter Communication

The theme of communications runs strong in six of the 10 HCAHPS summary measures. Nurses communicating well. Doctors communicating well. Rooms quiet at night. And more.

Leading hospitals have noticed this. And in this new era of “value-based purchasing,” they recognize that in order to stay competitive and qualify for reimbursements they need to continue to provide outstanding care – and focus on those HCAHPS scores.

The good ones are improving processes and relying on communication technology to help with key issues like:

       • Falls and medical errors
       • Patients feeling safe
       • Getting key info to clinicians quickly
       • Speeding response time for requests
       • Cutting environmental (often overhead) noise

Amcom Software helps hospitals solve these challenges with encrypted critical smartphone/tablet messaging and clinical alerting middleware.

Learn more in these videos:

      
How do you approach issues like these in your hospital?

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.

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?