Since 2008, the data gathered from Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) has enabled hospital facilities to have a standard set of measures for reporting the overall level of patient satisfaction. The importance of tracking and understanding patient satisfaction should not be minimized as it is highly correlated with desired outcomes such … Continued
HCIC fails to ensure persistent communications According to a report in Healthcare Informatics, the biggest concern facing CIOs is their data being compromised. In the wake of the WannaCry worm, this is hardly surprising. When the WannaCry worm hit the UK’s national health service, many of the country’s hospitals were unable to perform routine visits … Continued
Which secure texting solutions questions should you ask? A report from 2016 noted that as many as 90 percent of hospitals still use pagers. The reasons for continued use of pagers vary from hospital to hospital yet they boil down to the following three points: Cost – alternative technologies would be expensive Technology changes – … Continued
Why BYOD in healthcare is important Technology is ever-changing but in healthcare, the adoption of new technologies is often slow. One good example is demonstrated by healthcare’s use of smartphones over pagers. Eight years ago, only half of doctors used smartphones for work.Today, that number has grown to a healthy 84% which while more robust … Continued
On-call management’s long tail At its best, on-call management in healthcare can be labeled as inefficient. Yet, on-call has a long tail. Poor communication starts with poor on-call hygiene which hinders subsequent communications. Physicians, nurses and other caregivers do not spend enough time communicating about the patient’s needs because they have difficulty reaching other clinicians and … Continued
Do you know how pager inefficiencies impact your hospital ? Hospital paging system use reached its zenith in 1994. While pager use has dropped in the ensuing 23 years, cellphone use by physicians has becomes near ubiquitous with recent findings showing that 91% of physicians owned a smartphone and 88% used their mobile devices frequently in the … Continued
Risks of insecure texting in healthcare Many hospitals understand the limits of pagers in hindering communications. They see how pagers inhibit a robust communication system for the institution. As BYOD (bring your own device) increases in popularity, doctors are increasingly turning to texting as an easy way to communicate with one another and exchange patient information. … Continued
Studying the impediments to effective hospital workflow is at the top of the agenda for many hospital administrators’ lists. This is because inefficiencies are costly. One of the major contributors to these inefficiencies is insecure text messaging. In fact, over $11 billion is wasted each year due to the inefficiency of pagers and the lack … Continued
The threats posed by unencrypted pagers We recently had a chance to interview Adam Greene, a lawyer in Washington D.C. with the firm Davis Wright Tremaine LLP. One of Adam’s most intriguing cases occurred in 2014 with a hospital client. This hospital’s doctors and staff used pagers to routinely communicate about a patient’s status or … Continued
HIMSS17 closed last Thursday with a final salvo from Shark Tank hosts Robert Herjavec and Kevin O’Leary. Their closing remarks were very much in line with the themes of the conference: Security – Need to improve security of hospital systems to prevent hacking Workflow – Ensure a true digitization of health care records and upgrade … Continued
