Call Accounting Featured Article

Why Healthcare Entities Should Integrate Communications into Workflow

  By Paula Bernier, Executive Editor, TMC

Employees across business verticals have wasted valuable time moving from one platform to another to get their jobs done. So many organizations have been working to integrate their various systems – or adopt new multifunctional solutions – to allow for higher productivity and better end user outcomes.

One key way they’re doing that is by infusing communications capabilities into the systems employees spend most of their time using. This kind of strategy is often referred to as meeting customers where they are.

A new study from HIMSS Analytics and PatientSafe Solutions indicates this approach works well in the healthcare profession as well. HIMSS Analytics and PatientSafe Solutions recently conducted a survey of 300 clinicians, clinical informaticists, and IT professionals.

PatientSafe Solutions President and CEO Si Luo explained, “One of the biggest takeaways from this survey is that healthcare institutions can save money and achieve better outcomes if they stop treating selection and deployment of communications products as just a departmental-level project and start treating it as a cross-functional enterprise-wide initiative.” (The San Diego-based company provides HIPPA-compliant secure messaging solutions.)

The “State of Clinical Communication and Workflow” survey, which was conducted in November, also yielded the following results:

• 52 percent of IT respondents plan to implement smartphones for clinical communications;

• 43 percent of them plan to do that in the next 24 mounts;

• 53 percent of them plan to extend mobile communication platform beyond secure messaging;

• 71 percent will tie nurse call and telemetry alarms into their mobile platforms;

• 77 percent of IT respondents would like to integrate communications and clinical workflows and documentation;

• more than 90 percent clinicians and clinical informaticists say integrating communications and clinical workflows allows for better clinical, financial, and operational outcomes.