Nurses and other HCPs spend too much time waiting for access to specialists – and so do patients
Are your nurses spending too much time waiting for responses?
Evan Bossonis
Business Development Leader – Unified Communications
“…the majority of nurses felt that they would save 30–60 minutes per workday - time they could spend caring for patients directly - if they had instant access to experts. Eighty - four percent felt that the time they spent trying to reach people had a direct impact on patient care because of delays and time spent away from patients, while 65 percent estimated that they spent upward of 20 minutes each day trying to contact people, with many spending well over an hour.” This finding is from a study done by Forrester Research and commissioned by Cisco Systems.
Do you find this to be the case on your hospital floor, or in your practice? How much additional revenue could be captured if you could improve productivity by one hour per nurse per shift over a years time? What could be the impact on patient satisfaction?
Presence-based communications can display a specialist’s availability to individuals or groups that are permitted to communicate with the specialist. Presence can telegraph to a nurse, for example, whether a Dr. is online, on the phone, in a meeting, or with a patient, so that the nurse is not guessing as to his/her availability, and blindly leaving voicemail. Also, the nurse can choose the most practical way to communicate – if the Dr. is on the phone, a short IM can alert the Dr. of an urgent matter, without having to spend time retrieving a voice message - or perhaps a traditional phone call would be best. Dr.s can discourage incoming messages by manually setting their presence to “with patient” or some other presence state.
This technology is readily available for PCs and MACs, and on popular smartphones, tablets, as well as built-for-enterprise tablets such as the Cisco Cius.
Choosing the right technology partner can bring a well-designed and implemented communications solution to your environment, crafted to meet your institution’s needs. IPLogic has a highly experienced team of certified Solution Architects, Design and Implementation Engineers, as well as experienced project managers and trainers to insure your project goals are achieved.
Please let us know your thoughts. You can reach out to me at ebossonis@iplogic.com.
