All healthcare facilities require healthcare professionals to have effective communication amongst them so that facility’s operations can be managed smoothly and promptly. Thanks to technology, communication has become easier, especially when healthcare professionals want to connect with other healthcare facilities, caretakers, and even patient’s families. This is critical because this ensures effective care to patients. All modern healthcare facilities are leveraging technology for great communication to improve their patient care and accomplish business goals. But what is effective communication?
Effective Communication in Healthcare
When there is clear, timely, and discrete communication between healthcare professionals, it’s called effective communication. Such communication is required to make accurate diagnoses, make sure that treatments are being provided correctly, and ensure that patients understand their health requirements and statuses. Effective communication in healthcare calls for an ability to express technical terms in a way that patients can understand. Effective communication must also be comprehensive in the sense that when healthcare professionals receive information from other staff members, they have to interpret it and take action appropriately while communicating the whole process.
How Technology Impacts Healthcare Communication
Modern healthcare facilities and organizations have effective communication processes that leverage by technology so that workflows are smoother. For example, managing on-call schedules through tech-enabled communication, as opposed to a manual scheduling process, has more benefits.Before technology, operation managers wrote down lists to manage the on-call schedule of healthcare providers and they would also manually alert them through a pager or phone call. This process wasted a lot of time that could be spent caring for patients. Between managing the spreadsheets and alerting providers about the on-call statuses, healthcare professionals were not able to care for patients optimally.With technology and digital tools, now organizations can alert providers of their on-call schedules in real-time with a single notification sent on their cell phones. Healthcare applications like Hucu.ai are built for effective healthcare communication and to improve patient-centered care. Hucu.ai also has the three important components of effective healthcare communication. Let’s talk about those.
HIPAA-Compliant Texting
Sensitive patient information such as names, birthdates, treatments, health conditions, diagnosis, and health statuses have to be kept confidential. Without HIPAA-compliant digital tools, discretely communicating sensitive information can be impossible. With Hucu.ai, providers and healthcare professionals can follow the HIPAA requirement to limit data storage and transmission to a standardized format and share information, files, data, and instructions securely without fearing HIPAA violation and loss of confidentiality. Hucu.ai also has a ‘flag’ feature that allows professionals to differentiate between critical information from less important ones. HIPAA-compliant text enabling applications such as Hucu.ai also allows healthcare professionals to bring their own devices to the healthcare facility. The application is protected with a fingerprint scan and pin code. It has separate channels for different patients that work as distinguished threads in which healthcare staff, family members, and nurses can communicate. Users can take photos and share secure documents without having those media ever stored on their devices. Channels allow easy sharing of information, pictures, and even video chatting for real-time updates with specific collaborators included in the channels. To reduce workplace stress and confusion, it keeps professional and personal messaging separate in one device. Because Hucu.ai is such a simple way to improve communication, hospitals can see better patient outcomes with BYOD that have Hucu.ai installed.
Organized On-Call Scheduling
When on-call scheduling is organized, care teams can care for patients 24/7. With Hucu.ai, scheduling on-calls is a breeze as providers and healthcare professionals can create a channel for schedules and share real-time information about it. If someone is unavailable, another can volunteer immediately without causing a delay in patient care.
Notification System
Mass notification systems are platforms that are used to distribute information to a large number of professionals quickly. For example, informing the hospital about an emergency can be done through such a platform. The downside of using notification systems is that no PHI can be shared because these are not HIPAA-compliant.Hucu.ai covers this area as well. Healthcare officials can create a group or a channel for emergency announcements. All healthcare officials have to do is have pre-set template messages which they can type into the channel and Hucu.ai will notify everyone in the same instant.
Three Ways In Which Technology Can Help Improve Communication
Effective communication does not only improve practices but also the reputation of the organization. Here are a few strategies that can optimize the effectiveness of healthcare communication.
Evaluating Current Methods of Communication
A healthcare facility can improve communication by assessing communication policies, methods used, and the overall communication culture within it. It is important to know how communication takes place between different departments, administration, and staff or between staff and between patients and staff. Asking the staff how they feel about communication can give a lot of insights into the gaps that the healthcare facility can fill for improved communication. Once this is done, the assessment can be compared with the modern tools available. Sometimes hospitals are using multiple methods to communicate e.g. phone, fax, and email when that can be done with one technology like Hucu.ai.
Streamlining Communication Channels
Sending information through multiple channels is a common challenge. If the staff has to communicate the same information to multiple provides, administration, and other departments, doing so in different ways can cause inaccuracy in the information share. However, hucu.ai can help solve this problem. With Hucu.ai, notifications can be sent directly to multiple recipients with the same information.
Encouraging Mobile Collaboration
Healthcare organizations are busy with patient care and have tight schedules. Sometimes healthcare professionals do not have time to check faxes, emails, and pagers, locate information from files and notes. Mobile communication can ensure that staff can get information on time and effectively. As everyone is familiar with smartphones, these can be leveraged to use HIPAA-complaint messaging apps like Hucu.ai to communicate between staff efficiently.Hucu.ai can help staff share information no matter where they are and at any time. This can help providers care better for their patients when they know that the information they need and support is just a touch away.References: cipherhealth.com, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, blog.hhs1.comGet Ready To Transform Your Organization For
Value Based Care.
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