Global Hospital & Healthcare Management

In healthcare, response time is critical to ensuring patient recovery and satisfaction. To respond promptly to patient needs, caregivers require immediate and secure access to information, such as health records and prescription databases. To provide the highest-quality patient care, they also need timely access to other caregivers.

Most healthcare organizations today are characterized by legacy communications systems, which tend to be implemented and managed in silos by different teams, and by the use of multiple mobile devices on different networks. These disparate information systems limit the access of highly mobile caregivers to the most accurate data and human resources. Streamlining communications infrastructures for optimal security and user access is critical to the success of healthcare organizations whose goal is to provide quality patient service while ensuring compliance with industry regulations.

Mobility in Healthcare  
Caregivers are very mobile and use multiple communications devices, making it difficult to reach the right staff member in a timely manner. For example, nurses might use pagers to communicate with each other while physicians might prefer wireless handsets. According to a report by Forrester Research , 84 percent of the time spent searching for staff impacts patient care and usually delays that care until questions are answered.

Caregivers and other hospital staff such as pharmacists also require secure access to the latest and most accurate patient and medication data to avoid any errors related to medications. A patient’s condition might change and if the latest status is not reflected in the record, the results can be life-threatening. In a recent article , the director of Harvard Medical School, David W. Bates, estimates that medication-related errors cost over one million dollars a year in most hospitals.  

The disparate communications and information infrastructures can also result in error-prone hospital workflows, which, in turn, affect employee efficiency and patient service and satisfaction.

Regulatory Environment
The regulation levels in the healthcare industry and the enforcement of these standards varies widely by country. In the United States, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) mandates high levels of security and privacy for patient information. Despite the diversity in standards, all healthcare organizations are driven by the common goal to provide high quality patient care and to do this in the most efficient way by not only employing qualified staff but also providing them with the necessary tools and resources to be successful at their jobs.

Healthcare IT Innovations
Rising healthcare costs, worldwide increase in life expectancy, increased patient awareness, and a tighter regulatory environment are all factors driving innovation in healthcare IT technology. There is wide agreement that information technology is critical to addressing some of these macroeconomic factors.  IT companies throughout the world—from startups to well-established incumbents—have realized the tremendous opportunity in healthcare for their services.

While the range of technologies coming to market for specific healthcare needs is vast, solutions focused on simplifying communications and on improving visibility into high-value hospital assets and people are starting to see an increase in adoption because of the clear end-user benefits and tangible return on investment.

Benefits of Streamlining Communications
A robust and secure communications system—and one designed with usability in mind, to ensure maximum adoption—is a critical component of a healthcare organization’s infrastructure. Following are some of the benefits of a single communications infrastructure and the associated applications

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