Communication - Key to Patient Flow

Effective, efficient communication is key to effective, efficient patient flow.  If there are communication breakdowns between departments, there’s often confusion and delays in getting patients to the right level of care.  These delays often lead to unnecessary and redundant phone calls and pages, and undo / redo of patient bed assignments.

[Download our infographic.]

 

According to The Joint Commission, 70-80% of sentinel events had communication failure as the root cause.  Up to 40% of total communication time by clinicians is wasted on failed contact attempts.  And, there is an impact on patient safety – with poor communication leading to a 1.8x increase in patient-risk adjusted mortality and length of stay.

This was the case at a Chicago medical center, until they standardized their process and implemented TeleTracking’s Instant Notify feature.  The impact was immediate.  The ability and ease of communicating led to clinical and operational improvements.  From the clinical perspective, the improved communication led to: additional time for direct patient care, a decrease in the number of interruptions, and an increase in productivity.  Operational improvements included: an increase in unit clerk engagement, and an increase in productivity due to a decrease in phone calls.

The process breaks down as follows:

• 80,000 phone calls received in the unit
• A greeting for each call takes approximately 17 seconds
• The Instant Notify feature eliminated that time and resulted in a savings of 1,360,000 seconds or 378 hours saved.  Hours saved that can be spent caring for patients.

This is the type of improvement generated by the 1-way notification process.  Seeing the potential is what led to the development of the 2-way Instant Notify feature in TeleTracking’s Capacity Management Suite™ system V. 3.3.1.  Improved communication leads to improved care coordination.

Version 3.3.1 of the Capacity Management Suite system also provides:

• non-emergent communications
• awareness and reliability for staff
• accountability through time-stamped communications
• quick, easy and dependable communication

Interested in learning more?

We’re excited to showcase TeleTracking’s patient flow solutions at the upcoming American Organization of Nurse Executives (AONE) Annual Meeting, March 30 – April 2, at the Fort Worth Convention Center.  Visit TeleTracking at booth #305 and pick up your Super RN TeleBear or Super RN t-shirt.

Not attending AONE, take a moment to download our infographic, or contact us at info@teletracking.com for more information.