By Linda Fischer

Miscommunication between healthcare professionals – and sometimes a lack of communication altogether – often result in preventable medical errors, and sadly, even death.

During my 22 years as a hospital CIO, I saw communication breakdowns happen far too regularly in healthcare, even within the four walls of a single facility. For example, such failures often happen when patients are being discharged from the emergency department (ED) and waiting to be admitted as an inpatient.

The scenario goes like this: To admit an ED patient to the hospital, an ED physician must request an admit order from the attending physician. Many times, the ED physician will need to verify this step as the attending physician will be adamant that he or she was never contacted. As they sort out these issues and work to find a bed, the patient is in limbo in the ED waiting room, an area that many healthcare professions consider the most dangerous place in a hospital because of the potential complications from long wait times.

For more than 20 years, experts, academia, and think tanks have been examining how communication breakdowns contribute to errors and increase costs. Yet poor communication between care team members continues to increase the risk of hospital readmissions and add to healthcare costs, according to a 2016 study in Jama Internal Medicine, which identifies communication as a high-priority for improvement.

Fortunately, new technologies are improving healthcare communication in ways that improve care collaboration and patient outcomes, as well as meet requirements for value-based care and CMS’s new expectations for keeping patients fully engaged and informed. Providers now have access to secure collaboration tools that support HIPAA-compliant communication, telehealth, texting, and image sharing. By adopting such solutions, healthcare organizations can drive better care and improve patient safety. In fact, many healthcare providers are already reaping the benefits of these secure platforms.

Paramedics deliver safer, faster care
At King’s Daughters Medical Center in Mississippi, paramedics responding to emergency calls use secure texting to relay critical information to the ER while the ambulance heads to the hospital. This practice is particularly beneficial with certain medical emergencies, such as stroke, where every minute counts. First responders can securely access patients’ medication histories, minimizing the risk of life-threatening drug interactions on the scene. On the way to the ED, EMTs coordinate care with the emergency team by sharing health status, medication history, and even images. With this information in advance, hospital staff can mobilize the right resources, like a stent team or a neurologist, as well as start the admissions process, and create test orders, so they are fully prepared when the patient arrives.

By giving paramedics these tools, King’s Daughters has improved the safety and efficiency of patient transfers, made necessary interventions available sooner, and enhanced patient outcomes.

Secure and efficient communication between facilities
Ringgold County Hospital in Iowa uses secure communication tools to share patient information internally, as well as with other facilities. For example, an ER patient was diagnosed with a broken hip after technicians took several x-rays. The images were placed on a CD and sent with the patient upon transfer to another hospital for surgery. Unfortunately, the surgical hospital could not read the images. Using Ringgold’s secure platform, ER staff sent the x-ray images via text, eliminating the need for costly duplicate scans, saving the patient from additional radiation exposure, and improving time to treatment.

Better care team collaboration
A high-risk patient with one or more chronic conditions sees an average of seven doctors across four practices, while a surgery patient typically receives treatment from 27 different healthcare providers. Health records, including plans of care, are often stored in siloed systems and not easily shared between providers, making care team collaboration difficult and increasing the risk of medical errors.

For patients receiving care from multiple providers, care team members can establish secure communication using patient-centered chat tools. These tools make it easy for care team members to share care plans, consult with one another via text, and alert others to critical updates like changes in a patient’s status or a medication change.

A hospice organization in Texas recently experienced the benefits of group chats to address the needs of a high-risk patient quickly. After meeting with a client experiencing depression, one of the group’s certified nursing assistants alerted her fellow care team members using the hospice’s secure texting application. When the assigned social worker saw the message, she was able to quickly make an unscheduled same day visit to check on the patient.

Connecting with patients and families
With HIPAA compliant and secure communication tools, healthcare providers can stay connected with patients and their families, too. At East Tennessee Children’s Hospital, nurses in the neo-natal ICU text daily messages and photos to babies’ parents, as well as receive messages from families seeking additional updates. The solution allows family members to stay engaged in their baby’s care and have peace of mind; it’s also reduced the number of incoming phone calls to the NICU, boosting nurse productivity, and allowing nurses to focus attention on their infant patients.

The right tools can help
We may never completely eliminate communication breakdowns in healthcare. Still, we can minimize them with secure tools that connect all members of a patient’s care team, including family members and clinicians, regardless of their location or venue of care. By embracing the right solutions, clinicians can drive faster and safer patient care, increase patient engagement and satisfaction, and improve clinical and financial outcomes.

About the author: Linda Fischer is vice president of product Strategy at DrFirst, which develops integrated software solutions that unite the Healthiverse by reducing the information silos that exist in healthcare today.