Using technology to help care for the care team

Improving the patient and clinician experience is a priority for healthcare organizations. And while technology can help foster collaboration and communication among clinical staff, it can also be a barrier to success, limiting time spent at the patient bedside and leading to “walls” between care providers. In fact, gaps in communication are a key factor in 30% of malpractice cases. “When we looked at collaboration between the clinicians in our hospital—doctors, nurses, phlebotomists, and pharmacists, for example—we realized that they were operating on different ‘islands,’” notes Steve Shirley, CIO at Parkview Medical Center in Pueblo, Colo.

The answer for Shirley and his team was mobile technology, which frees clinicians to focus on the more meaningful work of patient care. “We developed a concept we call mobility-enabled collaborative caretaking, which gives us an opportunity to bring clinicians together to practice medicine, working with patients using the same mobile device with the same information,” he explains.

The results speak for themselves:

100% clinician adoption, for a consistent and improved clinician experience

60-minute reduction—per nurse, per shift—in the time spent on documentation and coordination, meaning each nurse has one hour more each shift to spend at the patient bedside, for better quality of care and a better patient experience.

100% bedside specimen collection, ensuring greater accuracy and reducing the need to travel to labs and other collection locations

98% medication administration accuracy, as a more cohesive communication system among clinicians reduces the potential for miscommunication

210% increase the medical center’s HCAHPS score (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems), which measures the patient’s view of their care experience

“Mobility has opened the door for the collaborative care team to achieve success in both communication and management of clinical data.”

—Steve Shirley, CIO, Parkview Medical Center

Shirley also notes that since Parkview Medical Center implemented its new mobile infrastructure, the number of help desk calls about connectivity issues has decreased. “We have about 1000 users on our system,” he says, “yet we now average only two calls per month about IT connectivity issues.” This leaves the IT team to focus on projects that can truly impact patient care, rather than on troubleshooting.

Listen to this webinar featuring Steve Shirley, and learn how he and the team at Parkview Medical Center are using mobile solutions to simplify and streamline the way clinicians work—enhancing the clinician experience and improving patient satisfaction.