Over the next few months, we will be posting a series of articles we call the “Workflow Series” that will highlight how deploying a Clinical Communication & Collaboration (CC&C) system can benefit your hospital. To start off the series, we will discuss how CC&C can impact the hospital staff that are neither doctors nor nurses. This may seem a bit unusual, but our deployments to date have shown substantial benefits to these users, so we would like to highlight them as we lead off the series.

Pharmacy
When one of our client hospitals decided to add the pharmacy to their CC&C project, those users were ecstatic. I haven’t seen such euphoria since the Red Sox won the 2004 World Series, so it warranted some investigation. The result: it all came down to Q&A.

A top-level pharmacist is thorough and leaves nothing to chance. Each pharmacy order is scrutinized carefully and will often generate some questions prior to fulfillment. To get those questions answered, the pharmacist will need to reach out to the patient’s active care team. Without a CC&C system in place, the pharmacist must:

  • Identify the care team
  • Track them down
  • Ask the pertinent question and get an answer
  • Repeat as needed

Without a smartphone-based CC&C system, this can be a time-consuming and frustrating process. More importantly, CC&C can provide an audit trail and written confirmation of any Q&A between the pharmacy and the care team – critical items for reducing pharmacy errors.

Facilities
When one of our hospitals deployed smartphones using our MH-CURE software to their facilities staff, we were shocked. But, then we learned how a CC&C solution applied to the facilities staff fit into their “Lean Hospital” initiative.

Lean is always about reducing wasted time and processes. In the case above, the facilities staff is responsible for the cleaning and preparing of rooms and beds after a patient has been discharged. The CC&C solution is now used to tell facilities which rooms are now empty and need to be cleaned. Once finished, they then use CC&C to notify admissions that a bed is ready for a new patient. This round-trip messaging has sped up the bed assignment process, which means lower cost and more patient revenue.

Dietary
To me, the most surprising use of CC&C was when a facility deployed smartphones with our MH-CURE software to their kitchen staff. But, their usage made perfect sense – improve patient satisfaction!

Getting the right meal to the right patient is not always obvious to either the dietary team nor to the care team on the med/surge floor. Being patient-based, CC&C can instantly connect the clinician to the dietary staff, insuring that any questions get answered quickly and even enabling “real time” food options to patients if they are unhappy with a meal. The CC&C system is now part of a high quality patient experience as this hospital strives to be best in class.

Summary
Over the next few articles, we will be discussing how CC&C can impact the different clinical and functional areas in your hospital. But, don’t forget about the folks above!