Clinical Staff Workflow

One of the best ways to provide patients with the best possible medical care and achieve better clinical outcomes is to improve clinical workflows. By streamlining clinical workflows and improving efficiency, medical staff will be able to concentrate on improving the standard of care provided to patients.

By changing clinical workflows to make them more effective, any roadblocks in patient treatment processes can be removed and there is more time available for medical staff to deal with patients directly.

Optimizing Clinical Staff Workflows in Healthcare Reduces Waste

Poor clinical workflows in healthcare lead to inefficient treatment processes and considerable wastage of time that could be better spent treating patients. Therefore, optimization of clinical staff workflows will improve results and give a greater return on the effort invested in treatment. The process can certainly be difficult, but even small alterations to clinical staff workflows can lead to roadblocks being eliminated.

Healthcare providers that have streamlined their staff workflows to try and improve the standard of care have seen great outcomes from the amount of work they invested in the project.

Find and Remove Bottlenecks to Accelerate Staff Workflow

There will always be some roadblocks on the treatment path for patients and this can lead to longer than necessary hospital stays. This ties up beds for longer than is necessary when they could be used to provide care to more patients. This situation can be very frustrating for hospital staff and can negatively affect staff morale.

There will naturally be some roadblocks that cannot be completely eliminated no matter how many changes you make so it is important to identify the most serious issues and tackle them head on. You can do this by using solutions such as automated check-in kiosks, which ease the administrative burden on clerical staff and improve the patient experience. Solutions for automating healthcare tasks can also help to eliminate duplication of tasks, a common issue in many healthcare facilities.

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Accelerating Clinical Staff Workflow in Healthcare by Optimizing Clinical Communication

Inefficient communication systems can result in many issues in clinics, one of the most common being considerable wastage of time chasing up messages and pages. A frustrating game of phone tag is all too common as medical staff try to liaise with each other. It has been estimated that 45 minutes can be wasted daily by physicians due to inefficient communication systems. Additionally, a study published in the Journal of Healthcare Management calculated that, on average, a 500-bed hospital loses the equivalent of $4 million per year as a result of poor communication processes.

When there are internal communication problems staff will have more difficulty deciding on the correct course of action as they will not have all the information available to make an informed decision. Recently, a Joint Commission study showed that over half of medical errors occur as a result of communication problems.

Communication and Collaboration Platforms Enhance Clinical Staff Workflow in the Healthcare Sector

HIPAA-compliant text messaging platforms have greatly improved the way that hospitals manage their clinical staff workflows. These types of communication platforms can be used by all members of the care team, not just physicians and nurses. They can also be used for providing telehealth services to patients and contacting patients’ families and caregivers.

Instead of having to rely on landlines and pagers, messages can be sent almost instantly for quick consults, crucial data can quickly be obtained at patients’ bedsides, and faster and more effective communication helps cut out roadblocks in hospitals that hamper patient throughput.

Healthcare communication and collaboration systems not only permit the sharing of information between members of the treatment team, they also link up in a straightforward manner with EHRs and other third-party solutions. Integration with EHRs for instance can help to close gaps in EHR functionality. Warnings and notifications can be configured to be sent directly to a nurse or physician, eliminating the need to constantly login to the EHR at a computer to find essential information. HIPAA-compliant text messaging platforms are support video and audio calls, so there is no need to jump between platforms for more in-depth consultations.

Healthcare providers that have implemented communication and collaboration systems have seen measurable improvements in patient satisfaction, quicker transfer times, improved bed utilization, faster patient throughput, and better patient outcomes with fewer readmissions.