A New Era of Clinical Communication
In the bustling corridors of our hospitals, every beep, buzz and ring signify a critical piece of information. As providers and nurses tend to their patients, seamless communication isn’t just a convenience, it’s a necessity. At Houston Methodist, we’ve adopted a new approach towards clinical communication, with the goal of transforming how clinicians interact and collaborate to deliver patient care, using innovative tools and streamlined workflows.
At the heart of this is a commitment to putting patients at the center of care. Dr. Jordan Dale, chief medical information officer and chief health AI officer, explains, “Our goal is to simplify and standardize communication systemwide. By doing so, we ensure that our clinicians have reliable and consistent processes and technology to facilitate highly impactful communications for high quality patient care. This has become an exceedingly necessary component of patient care as the speed and complexity of care has accelerated, and we must rely on these practices to keep the patient at the center of everything we do.”
Our clinical communication strategy encompasses three key pillars. Each of the following is designed to streamline processes, enhance patient care and improve clinician efficiency:
- On call directory and role-based communication
- Mobile first strategies
- Alarm routing
Pillar 1: On Call Directory and Role-Based Communication
Each time a new clinician starts working at HM, they’re provided essentials, like an ID badge and access to our networks and intranet. Starting in June 2023, we introduced QGenda and Epic On-Call Finder. These tools enable our clinicians to easily access a directory of contacts for patient care. They no longer need to create their own directories – they are built into our systems.
Additionally, these directories are more role-based, than focused on individual names. When you call 911, you don’t need to know the firefighters’ names, you just need the right people to show up. The strategy at HM is similar. You don’t need the name of a unit’s charge nurse to contact them.
For physicians, the Epic On-Call finder is a powerful tool designed to streamline communication. Instead of knowing the specific name of a patient’s cardiologist, the Epic On-Call finder allows you to directly connect with the appropriate specialist. This ensures that you can quickly and efficiently reach the cardiologist responsible for a patient’s care, facilitating timely and accurate medical consultations. By focusing on the role rather than the individual, the Epic On-Call finder enhances coordination and reduces the time spent searching for contact information, ultimately improving patient outcomes and operational efficiency.
Pillar 2: Mobile First Strategies
Instead of multiple devices and systems to communicate and collaborate with, today, clinicians at all HM hospitals have shared iPhones, with personal phone numbers, to make coordination of care easier. And in the future, we plan to equip more providers, clinicians and staff with mobile devices or enable bring-your-own-device funtctionaity. With the iPhone at the center, clinical teams are enabled with all the apps they need from one device, including Epic mobile (Haiku, Canto, Rover), Vocera Edge, Secure Chat, integrated barcode scanning, wound photography, as well as basic phone calls to other clinicians.
If a new app is needed, it can easily be added with a push to the shared platform.
“Having everything we need on one device has been a game-changer,” notes Dr. Jordan Dale, chief medical information officer and chief health AI officer. “It allows them to respond to alerts, access patient records and communicate with the care team all from the palm of their hand.”
Pillar 3: Alarm Routing and Team Activations
After the first two pillars of our clinical communications strategy are successfully implemented, we’ll introduce a SMART system to facilitate intelligent patient alarm routing. With an enhanced alarm routing tool, patients’ needs, such as requesting a blanket or assistance with the bathroom, will be promptly escalated to the appropriate staff, units or departments. This improvement will help ensure that everyone is more responsive and that patients feel heard and attended to more quickly.
In situations where a CERT or code team is required, the automated alerting system can activate notifications on the relevant team members’ devices, regardless of their location within the hospital. Additionally, smart reminders can be triggered if an alarm acknowledgment isn’t confirmed, ensuring that patients receive the care they need, without delay.
This effort is being pilot tested at HMW and launched at HMCY. The goal is to improve clinician response times and enhance the patient experience.
Next Steps: Looking to 2025 and Beyond
As we implement each pillar of our clinical communications strategy, we’re creating a consistent and fully integrated platform. This will make it easier for our clinicians to identify and contact the right person, ensuring more seamless communication. By reducing the effort and time searching for names, we can minimize disruptions to patient care, allowing our clinicians to focus more on delivering high-quality care.
Our improved alarm and reminder systems will ensure that messages are more focused and targeted, allowing issues to be escalated to the right team members more efficiently. This will help maintain the delivery of high-quality, fast-paced care, with technology supporting our needs and keeping patients at the center of everything we do.