For hospital communications, the future has arrived

This article originally appeared in print with the headline, "Prescription for success."

From the onset, we enlisted our clinical team as part of the decision-making process. We wanted to make sure that the system would meet the team’s patient-care requirements, as well as be easy to use. An important consideration was the patient-centric design of the new facility that would change the way our nurses communicated and delivered care.

The new 212,000-square-foot KDH hospital has 86 beds—all located in private rooms. For the medical-surgical units, this translates into two floors with 300-foot hallways (the length of a football field), each with 36 private rooms. Nursing pods have replaced the traditional centralized nurse’s station, with the goal of having nurses spend more time in patient rooms.

In our old facility, the unit secretary at each nurse’s station essentially served as the communications system – taking calls and information and triaging tasks to the appropriate person. We tried cell phones previously, but they were not a practical solution. Overhead paging was the primary tool for reaching a mobile caregiver who was out of sight. The configuration of the new hospital meant that nurses would no longer be in arm’s reach of a central coordinator. This decentralized layout required a new communications approach, and the goal was to eliminate overhead paging.

We fully understood what we wanted the new communications system to accomplish when we began our search. Our top priorities included:

• The ability for a nurse to immediately receive messages and information regarding the patients in their care—from direct patient requests and family member calls to new physician orders, lab results, and much more.
• A system that allows managers to quickly establish and update staff assignments and workflow.
• Communications that follow the nurses wherever they go in the facility, while giving them continual access to vital patient information.
• Group paging capabilities for easily contacting multiple people. 
• Ease of use, especially when nurses need to reach a physician, other staff members, or call for help.
• Communications that support a quiet hospital environment by eliminating overhead paging and redirecting alarms and alerts to the appropriate caregivers.

The selection committee looked at a variety of solutions, many of which rely on mobile phones and applications. The flexibility, portability and functionality of smartphone technology offered a real advantage, but the challenge was finding a solution that could meet all of our needs.