Readers Write: The Value Proposition of Optimizing Clinical Communication

The Value Proposition of Optimizing Clinical Communication
By James Jones and Wayne Manuel

James Jones, BSN, MBA, MSN, NEA-BC is VP of patient care services and nursing operations at University of Washington Medicine’s Valley Medical Center. Wayne Manuel is senior VP of strategic services at University of Washington Medicine’s Valley Medical Center.

A few years ago, Wayne was on an airplane when he came across a magazine article about how Texas Children’s Hospital switched to Apple iPhones to improve clinical communication and reduce noise. With some due diligence, he found that Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and several other hospitals had also switched from old ways of communicating to iPhones, and they experienced similar positive results. As our senior VP of strategic services, Wayne recognized the opportunity for UW Medicine’s Valley Medical Center to replace our old, noisy phones with smartphones.

Around the same time, James attended a dinner event for chief nursing officers in Seattle. Again, smartphones were a main topic of the discussion, representing a solution to some common clinical communication challenges.

With both of us having technical backgrounds, we started sharing ideas on how to transition from our disparate communication systems to a more modern solution. We approached our CNO and CMO with research on the value proposition of implementing a mobile communication strategy. It was easy to see how a new way of communicating would bring us additional value. Some of the improvements we hoped to achieve included:

• Improving the clinician and patient experience.
• Reducing interruptions.
• Gaining workflow efficiencies.
• Saving time for clinicians.
• Improving communication between interdisciplinary teams.
• Meeting The Joint Commission’s National Patient Safety Goals for alarm management.

At that time, we had recently deployed a new electronic health record (EHR), which gave us the opportunity to improve many other systems and workflows. Our senior leadership team felt that to get the most out of our EHR, we needed a mobile app to close the gap and provide real-time access to clinical information, allow for mobile documentation, and offer an easy way for nurses and other staff to communicate.

Our staff were already using smartphones in their personal lives and were frustrated with the multiple communication devices they were juggling (two-way radios, legacy phones, pagers, and overhead paging). We met with many of our nurses to get their input, and one said, “Anything you can do to lighten the load would be greatly appreciated.”

We started with a phased approach, rolling out iPhones to one pilot unit, then to all inpatient units and several ancillary departments for calling; secure text messaging; and notification of alarms and alerts from patient monitoring, patient elopement, and the nurse call system. This was done via Voalte and Connexall applications.

We conducted before and after analysis so we could measure the outcomes from the new clinical workflows. One area we looked at was hospital-acquired pressure ulcers and skin integrity events. Using the iPhones, our wound care nurses saw an immediate improvement in workflow by using the Epic Rover application to take a photo of the wound, which uploads the photo for documentation into the patient medical record. The physician or wound care nurses can see it immediately and even show it to the patient and their family when rounding with a physician.

With only two dedicated wound care nurses on our team, their time is extremely limited. Rather than spending time walking around looking for a physician or nurse to discuss a patient, they can now find the appropriate physician in the smartphone directory, send a photo via Rover, and ask the physician to call when he or she is available to discuss treatment. The result has been better communication among our interdisciplinary teams, more efficient use of time for our wound care team, real-time documentation to the medical record, and improved communication with patients and families.

Another area where we have made great headway with the iPhones is in reducing medication errors. Using our new workflow, a nurse changes his or her status in the directory from “available” to “busy” and types in a status message, such as “administering meds.” This lets the rest of the care team know not to interrupt that nurse until their status changes back to “available.” New workflows escalate alerts to a backup while that nurse is busy.

Today, we are using iPhones for communication on all clinical inpatient units for nurses, physicians, respiratory therapists, discharge planners, environmental services managers, and administration. We are communicating more efficiently, with about 70 percent of all communication now taking place via text message versus 30 percent via voice calls. Our very tech-savvy staff loves the new solution and has adapted well to the workflow changes. One nurse said her unit is much quieter and that the hospital “feels like a hotel, so patients can get some rest.”

In our first year using smartphones, we are still learning where we can make adjustments in our workflows to make the most of our new way of communication. Going forward, we will be analyzing workflow efficiencies, adjusting alarm settings, and managing notifications from nurse call, physiological monitors, and the EHR.

The authors presented an HIStalk webinar titled “Improving patient outcomes with smartphones: UW Medicine Valley Medical Center’s story.”