How to Get Internal Buy-In for a Clinical Communications Platform

As a change agent in a healthcare organization, it’s likely that you’re eager to give your antiquated paging system the boot and to replace it with a more updated, efficient, HIPAA-compliant clinical communications platform. However, convincing the rest of the organization isn’t always easy. It’s normal to get resistance from your care team whenever you introduce new processes or technologies.

To ensure buy-in and secure fast adoption, follow these steps:  

Show the ROI of a Clinical Communications Platform

Your organization may be reluctant to trade in pagers for smartphone apps due to perceived cost disadvantages. The reality is that pager replacement platforms are less costly than antiquated paging systems.

For example, let’s take a look at the simple, ordinary Motorola pager. This device can cost a healthcare organization nearly $230 per year per user. Even worse, this doesn’t even include the extra $20 monthly charge needed for nationwide coverage—yikes. Let the naysayers in your organization know that pager replacement platforms such as OnPage can save up to 60 percent in costs over traditional pagers. This includes extended cellular and Wi-Fi coverage in over 175 countries! With lower price points and additional benefits, clinical communications platforms streamline care team workflows, ensuring that healthcare organizations achieve a greater ROI.

Additionally, healthcare organizations that still use pagers are susceptible to protected health information (PHI) intrusions and data breaches. Hospitals that have been breached pay an average of $313,000 for confiscated PHI data.

With this information in hand, you’ll be able to break down resistance around cost concerns.

Show Your Team What’s in It for Them

Highlight the benefits of “bring your own device” BYOD–the organization can now allow medical practitioners to carry just one device (i.e., their own smartphones) rather than two technologies, consisting of a smartphone and pager. Besides, who’s willing to carry a bulky, unnecessary pager that’s clipped onto their scrubs?

Additionally, you can tout that a clinical communication solution that includes support for on-call scheduling improves workload organization, ensuring that care team practitioners work in predefined rotations and turns. Further, your care teams can benefit from contextual attachments included with their messages, guaranteeing that they receive more detailed patient information before deciding on next steps.

Most importantly, BYOD allows your team to receive pages, regardless of their current, physical location.

Outline the Onboarding Process

There is a tendency to feel safe with a familiar legacy system but the key to assuring users that the workflow will not be disrupted by new technology is to put in place a solid onboarding plan. Work with your vendor to deliver a comprehensive onboarding process throughout the organization. Onboarding should include an explanation of how the new clinical communications platform can streamline workflows and enhance team collaboration. Trusted vendors will provide remote or on-site courses as part of the onboarding process, to make sure that adoption is as fast and easy as possible.

Additionally, vendors seek product proficiency from you prior to a full, widespread pager replacement rollout. In this way, a vendor can ensure that you fully grasp how a pager solution works, making sure that the rollout is a simple, plug and play process after the product’s trial period.

Essentially, the onboarding process is part of an effective implementation plan that (1) increases care team acceptance of a new technology and (2) mitigates any further resistance.

Showcase a Pager Replacement Solution’s Relative Advantage

Relative advantage refers to a product’s superiority over similar, subpar alternatives and substitutes. In the case of your patients, this means that they prefer quicker attention and treatment attributed to pager replacement solutions over slower, ineffective pager communications.

A pager solution not only improves the patient experience, but it also ensures that your hospital improves its bottom line, streamlines its check-in process and enhances its billing procedures.

At its core, pager replacement solutions allow an organization to reap the rewards of advanced, secure and faster communications. The platform also fosters care team collaboration, ensuring that staff members and patients remain happy or satisfied.

Want to adopt a more secure, clinical communications option? Need help convincing your team? Contact us now or reach our sales department directly at sales@onpagecorp.com to take the first step toward a better approach.