Use Clinical Mobility Solutions to Streamline Healthcare Communications

Healthcare communications technology has evolved at an increasingly rapid pace. That rate of change has only accelerated in light of the coronavirus pandemic and the increase in demand for telehealth services. To ensure that your healthcare organization can best serve patients on-site or virtually, it’s necessary to onboard the right clinical mobility solutions. Effective communication tools not only allow you to better serve patients but can also facilitate more efficient communication between clinicians and healthcare staff.

CDW clinical mobility experts Michael Goad and Remy Morgan shared their insights on best practices for implementing the right clinical mobility solutions to keep your healthcare practice ahead of the curve. 

Ensuring a simple, easily understandable user experience is key for clinical mobility technology adoption. Many healthcare organizations find it challenging to streamline the user experience because they use multiple applications in their IT systems.

When it comes to encouraging adoption and best practices within clinical communication, Goad emphasized that it’s about finding the right tools to enable a better user experience. Single Sign-On (SSO) technology is one to solve for this, as it allows users to access multiple applications using one set of credentials. For that to be effective, healthcare organizations should make sure that they have the right dependencies in place to make SSO work and validate that their vendor applications properly support it.

To ensure an optimal user experience, healthcare organizations need to ensure that their applications can communicate with one another in the same technology ecosystem and also ensure staff are properly trained on how to use the technology. 

Implementing clinical mobility technology can be critical for making sure that clinicians can communicate swiftly and ensure that staff information is updated. Morgan shared that many healthcare organizations still rely on traditional on-call systems, like white boards or Excel spreadsheets. This requires clinicians to either physically check the white board or pull up that Excel spreadsheet; it also means those on-call systems require manual updates.

Let’s look at the example of paging Dr. Grey, the cardiologist on call. Historically, hospital staff would need to look up Dr. Grey’s contact information, or check a physical white board to make sure the doctor was still on shift. With an automated on-call system, hospital staff can now reach the cardiologist on call with the click of a button. Automated on-call systems can be integrated into clinical communication and collaboration applications. Clinicians can then use their mobile phones to communicate through VoIP calling or secure messaging, instead of looking up other clinicians by name. 

When it comes to onboarding a clinical mobility solution, having the right training and onboarding plan in place is just as important as the technology itself. One of the most pressing challenges is ensuring that clinicians and IT staff are on the same page. Oftentimes, doctors, nurses, and hospital IT staff might have different priorities or concerns when it comes to implementing clinical communication technology. Morgan explained that can lead to complications down the road, as one party might make decisions about which technology to implement without consulting another.

In order to ensure that clinical communication technology can be successfully onboarded, Morgan recommends finding a way to align the needs of clinicians and healthcare IT staff. Turning to outside consultation services, such as CDW’s Clinical Mobility Workshop, can help to meet this goal.

A phased approach also works well for clinical communication technology adoption. This way doctors and nurses can become comfortable with new technologies as they’re implemented at a healthcare organization, which minimizes workflow interruptions and ensures consistency of care.

For onboarding, Morgan recommends identifying “super trainers” within your healthcare organization. These doctors or nurses can be trained on the new clinical mobility technology first, then become evangelists for the new technology and assist their colleagues. 

Whether you are looking to update an outdated clinical communications system, optimize the clinical mobility technology you have on hand, or you want a partner to help you design and implement your clinical mobility strategy, CDW can help you with the right solution to meet your needs.