Our Journey to Improving Clinical Communication and Documentation
A patient care assistant observes a patient who’s suddenly slurring their speech and has weakness on one side. The PCA notifies the bedside nurse, who activates the hospital’s response team for strokes using Team Activations workflows. Within moments, all members of the stroke team, based on the roles they signed into when logging on to Epic, receive automated alerts through Epic on their mobile devices.
The care team quickly responds, assembling at the patient’s bedside and initiating protocols for immediate imaging and treatment. Later, the bedside nurse leverages generative AI in Epic to create an End-of-Shift note for the patient’s next nurse. Valuable time is saved, the care team is synchronized and the patient receives timely, potentially lifesaving treatment.
This successful scenario aligns with our streamlined clinical communication and documentation journey, one that’s focused on making it easier for our care teams to communicate with each other while spending less time documenting and more time on what matters most — our patients.
“Communication is critical for patient safety,” said Dr. Jordan Dale, chief medical information officer and chief health AI officer. “We’re focused on making the reliable way the easy way, standardizing tools and reducing the manual entry requirements into different systems that steals time from focused patient care coordination.”
A Clearer Communication Pathway for the Whole Care Team
One area of focus is unifying how clinical teams across Houston Methodist connect, communicate and collaborate. These efforts resulted in the following improvements:
- Providing shared iPhones and new workflows to inpatient clinicians to use for seamless communication with the entire care team.
- Enabling dynamic alerts for stroke and STEMI care team activation in emergent situations.
- Standardizing on-call and directory services across HM so the right care team members can be easily reached when needed.
- Reducing reliance on answering services in favor of more direct communication in urgent situations.
- Creating transparent escalation pathways that support inpatient care.
The goal was to make it easier for the entire care team to deliver patient care when, where and how it’s needed. That approach translated into measurable adoption and momentum leveraging these technologies:
- Vocera Edge – a mobile app that provides seamless communication among care teams. Logins increased by more than 200% systemwide between Jan. 1 and Dec. 20, 2025.
- Secure Chat – Epic’s HIPAA-compliant instant messaging tool. Messaging among RNs and care teams surged by over 130%.
- Rover – Epic’s mobile app for clinical team members. Usage increased throughout 2025, with more clinicians using flowsheet documentation (more than 2.4 million flowsheets documented) or sending Secure Chat messages (approx. two million messages).
A Faster Route from Bedside to the Right Action
An essential component of improving communication is ensuring that actionable information is directed to the right on-call clinicians without delay. This is being achieved through the expanded use of shared iPhones and Teams activations at HMCY, HMW and HMWB, with plans to expand systemwide.
The use of advanced team activations, processes that rapidly notify care teams of time-critical patient events, including stroke/telestroke, ELVO and STEMI, are improving communication and outcomes.
“As nursing leaders, we’re always looking for what reduces distractions and promotes efficiency while improving responsiveness,” said Gail Vozzella, senior VP and system chief nursing officer. “These gains in mobile communication and integrated workflows help our teams spend less time tracking people down and more time delivering compassionate, uninterrupted care.”
Epic Enhancements that Return Minutes to Patient Care
Another area where we’re saving administrative time for our nurses is the adoption of pre-built and user-created macros that automatically enter standard values in a flowsheet. In 2025, HM nurses used flowsheet macros systemwide to save 34.1 million clicks, with up to 7.74% of all flowsheet data filed from macros per month.
Plus, our Epic experience for nurses was recognized nationally with a KLAS Arch Collaborative Pinnacle Award for EHR Experience for Nurses, underscoring our efforts with bedside-to-technology engagement.
“Every click we remove is a tiny gift back to clinicians,” explained Connie Lauw, RN and clinical informaticist at HMH. “The fewer distractions, fewer chances for error and a smoother path to telling our patients’ stories accurately in Epic is very much appreciated.”
GenAI Adoption in Nursing Provides Early Wins
AI is also helping to free up our clinicians. The End-of-Shift note, a summary completed at the conclusion of a shift, used to be a time-intensive process. With our new AI-enabled End-of-Shift note, nurses are getting more time back, and they’re excited to use the tool. Adoption is at more than 98% systemwide.
Thoughtful App Adoption for Better Results Care
We’ve also focused on thoughtful simplification, replacing tools where Epic or a more fitting system could do the job better. One key move was retiring an old directory and texting platform for providers and transitioning to an Epic-supported on-call scheduling system. The benefits included more standardized on-call and directory services that make it easier to find the right covering provider, including:
- More transparent escalation pathways, reducing dependency on answering services and expediting coordination among providers and care teams.
- Less fatigue and overlapping applications which reduces training burden and creates a more consistent day-to-day experience.
What This Means for 2026 and Beyond
Our journey to make it easier for our clinicians to better care for our patients will continue in 2026, with improved communication and documentation. Dr. Dale concluded, “When we look at technology and innovation, we first ensure we have a full picture of the clinical and patient experience. Then we ask, how can we make our processes more productive and beneficial for the clinician, and safer, more coordinated and personal for the patient? That’s what guides our plans and efforts for next year and the years to come.”