Enhancing Interdepartmental Collaboration With Integrated Communication Tools
By Devin Partida, Editor-in-Chief, ReHack.com
LinkedIn: Devin Partida
LinkedIn: ReHack Magazine
Clear communication in health care can mean the difference between life and death. When delays, miscommunications and inefficiencies disrupt treatment, they directly impact patient outcomes. Traditional modes of communication may have worked in the past, but human error and forgetfulness can hinder its effectiveness. A nurse taking over a shift without receiving complete information about someone’s condition or mistakes in medical notes can create silos among immediate clinical staff and between clinical, administrative and support teams.
An integrated communication tool offers a unified solution. It streamlines information flow, provides access to critical patient data and reduces errors, ultimately enabling medical teams to improve response times.
The $1.7 Billion Problem: How Poor Communication Harms Health Care
A 2016 study by CRICO found that 7,149 medical malpractice lawsuits were a result of communication breakdowns. Those failures led to a loss of almost 2,000 lives — all nearly preventable — and expended $1.7 billion in malpractice costs. While a more recent figure doesn’t exist, these earlier statistics continue to highlight the necessity for a reliable and integrated communication tool to avoid more sentinel events almost a decade later.
5 Must-Have Features for Seamless Health Care Communication
The key characteristics of an ideal unified platform must consolidate multiple functionalities in one single tool. It should facilitate seamless communication access departments to afford efficient and accurate care to patients. The five essential features include:
- Unified messaging and alerts: Secure instant messaging, SMS and push notifications keep all teams informed of urgent updates should their expertise be needed.
- Voice and video communication: Real-time voice and video calls improve coordination between physicians, nurses and support staff.
- Task management and workflow automation: Automated alerts for test results, discharge planning and critical lab values reduce delays.
- EHR and system integration: Direct integration with EHRs allows quick access to patient data without switching between platforms.
- HIPAA-compliant security measures: End-to-end encryption and audit trails ensure compliance with privacy regulations.
How Integrated Communication Tools Benefit the Medical Industry
When there’s one effective system of health care communication, it benefits everyone involved — from patients to medical teams. It minimizes the lack of compliance due to misunderstanding and provides a more accurate framework for critical decision-making.
Improving Patient Care Coordination
Interdepartmental collaboration is essential for effective patient care. An integrated communication tool enhances coordination by:
- Reducing handoff errors: Standardized protocols, such as situation, background, assessment and recommendation information, are easily accessible for patient transfers between shifts and departments.
- Enhancing response times: Say a stroke patient is admitted to the ER. Automated notification alerts the neurology team to ensure time-sensitive care instead of relying on pagers and multiple phone calls.
- Facilitating remote collaboration: Secure telehealth solutions and virtual consultations between rural clinic physicians and specialists at major hospitals enable real-time decision-making.
- Minimizing readmissions: Better coordination between departments ensures follow-up care is properly managed. For example, a patient who is discharged after heart surgery would receive automated reminders to reduce the risk of complications and costly readmissions.
Addressing Common Communication Barriers
There’s a lot that goes into communication between medical teams. These factors can hinder effective collaboration but can be resolved by an interdepartmental system.
- Hierarchical barriers: Often, nurses notice a potential dosage error in a patient’s chart but are hesitant to question the attending physician directly. Instead of a dreaded in-person discussion, nurses can simply flag the issue so the doctor can go over the concern, acknowledge the error and update the prescription.
- Disparate technology systems: Nonstandardized EHRs and communication platforms create interoperability issues. A malfunction could occur and cause diagnostic mistakes, which could complicate information. If there’s one modern EHR system across departments, there would be no delay in accessing patient imaging, especially if shared in a cloud-based integration solution.
- Time constraints: High patient loads can overburden the emergency department. Instead of relying on multiple pagers and phone calls to coordinate patient admissions, an AI-driven system could automatically assign upcoming cases to available physicians.
Maintaining Compliance With Data Privacy Regulations
Many instant messaging options offer a quick option to send critical lab results to a doctor for immediate review. Data breaches have already risked 385 million patient records since 2010, so texting results through an unsecured personal phone risks privacy.
Hence, teams should use a HIPAA-compliant secure messaging app integrated with the hospital’s EHR. The physician receives an instant alert with a secure link to view the lab report within the system, ensuring no patient data is exposed.
Breaking Down Silos in Health Care
Advancements in technology continue to transform communication in health care, driving efficiency and improving patient outcomes. Medical professionals exchange the correct information in the most critical times. Safe patients are happy patients, which also gives medical workers confidence in the care they provide.
