On-call scheduling can be complex for both hospitals and physician specialties. Although certain aspects of EMTALA were relaxed during COVID to manage the surge of patients, there were still incidents of enforcement actions against providers throughout 2020. As we emerge from the pandemic, hospitals will need to refine their approach to managing their on-call scheduling.
Collaborative care refers to providers being able to discuss a patient’s care, treatment, and outcome. For instance, sharing test results among physicians, nurses, and other providers is critical to successful collaborative care. Of course, this sharing of information must be done securely and consistently.
Clinical interruptions, incessant unfiltered patient alarms and alerts, and extensive documentation inhibit nurses from providing the best patient care and can cause burnout. Unfortunately, these issues are the norm at most hospitals and healthcare systems. Decatur Morgan was no different, but they decided to do something about it.
Effective physician scheduling can be difficult and time-consuming. A surge in patients along with limited staff makes adequate and timely on-call scheduling even more challenging. At the same time, it’s important to evenly distribute hours — one physician can’t be over-scheduled while another is greatly under-scheduled.
At the peak of the pandemic’s onset, NBI was losing 10 patients a day on average. As days turned into weeks, the situation became dire, not only for patients, but for physicians as well.
“Every minute a stroke patient goes without blood flow to the brain, patients lose two million neurons,” says Dr. Rao. “This has a significant impact on the brain and directly affects their ability to recover and rehabilitate.”
When a healthcare system creates an initiative to build “one source of on-call truth”, the foundation will be implementing an enterprise-wide physician call scheduling software solution throughout the organization. In order to get the most value from an on-call scheduling software, it’s best to choose a fully-automated system that has a few basic functions.
More hospitals are hiring Chief Patient Experience Officers, and as the role matures, we’re learning that patients want to see evidence of exceptional communication, both with their clinicians and between their clinicians.
To enhance communication between their clinical providers and the laboratory, Geisinger implemented TigerConnect’s secure text messaging for their critical value notifications, automatically alerting the correct physician at the appropriate times. These automatic alerts reduce ineffective workflows, improve time management, and provide patients with critical values quickly and reliably.
Thousands of hospitals, clinics, and physician practices have successfully implemented one or more of these three tips for improving clinical workflows in healthcare.
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Since 2010 TigerConnect has been transforming healthcare communications by enabling our customers to automate clinical workflows, speed decisions, and improve patient outcomes. Today our cloud-native Clinical Communication and Collaboration (CC&C) solutions are used by over 7,000 healthcare organizations and 700,000 care team members.
