Healthcare, with all its technological advances, finds itself stuck in the dark ages, with pagers, phone calls and standard sms texting still having a heavy hold on physicians across the country. And even though pagers were once considered a badge of honor among newly minted doctors, they are now viewed with the same disdain as CD players by today’s tech savvy healthcare providers. This is because there is a better way for doctors to communicate. With HIPAA-compliant secure texting platforms such as QliqSOFT, more and more physicians are ditching their pagers in favor of smartphones. Below are 8 reasons why HIPAA-compliant secure text messaging for healthcare is changing the way doctors communicate and collaborate.
1. Physician Privacy and Patient Communication
Everyone speaks of patient privacy, but what about that of physicians? With Qliq Assisted Calling, doctors are able to place calls to other clinicians and even patients directly from the app, while at the same time keep their mobile numbers private. Hospital administrators can customize the caller ID so that patient sees calls from the known healthcare organization vs. typical caller ID blocking that shows “Caller ID blocked”, which the patient ignores, thereby affecting patient communication. The patient can call back the number and reach the healthcare organization receptionist and be routed to right care team member.
2. Quick and Reliable Nurse Communication
Inefficient communication is a major drain on a doctor’s time, taking them away from the patient’s bedside - where they matter the most. While pagers provide immediate notifications, they only allow doctors to send and receive brief messages. QliqSOFT’s HIPAA-compliant secure texting solution serves as a clinical collaboration tool – empowering care team members to share patient data such as videos, images and documents from anywhere. Clinicians can also send broadcast messages, set up group chats, share documents, and more while on the go. This frees up more of their time to care for their patients.
3. Cut the Paperwork in Half
Doctors spend twice as much time filling out paperwork than actually seeing patients. A recently published study in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that for every hour doctors spent seeing patients, they were devoting nearly two additional hours on paperwork. Nurses don’t fare any better. They often walk as many as five miles during their shifts to track down equipment, supplies and doctors’ signatures on patient orders. Qliq Fill and Sign allows care team members to easily create, sign and share PDF documents, as well as upload them to a patient’s electronic health record (EHR). Doctors can sign off on orders while rounding. l save valuable time and steps while getting the authorizations they need.
4. Quick Consults that Value Your Time
Physicians typically issue at least one patient consult per day. However, the process of requesting a consultation, collaborating with the consulting physician on patient care, and documenting the recommendation can be time-consuming. QliqSOFT’s HIPAA-compliant secure text messaging platform streamlines the consult process and facilitates the next phase of a patient’s care.With QliqSOFT, the requesting physician can send an application for a consultation as a pre-formatted secure text message. This message can include all the necessary information the consulting physician needs to evaluate the case, including written details, images and documentation. They can accept the consultation via a secure text message in real-time – without resorting to phone tag. This process saves physicians time and ensures seamless patient handoffs.
5. Every Contact, All in One Place
Patient-centered care can be complex – with many team members involved in the care experience. It’s no wonder that 52 percent of clinicians admit they don’t always know the correct care team member to contact. With QliqSOFT, physicians can leverage their organization’s internal database and organize colleague’s names by specialty, reducing the amount of time spent searching for the right contact. Quick, three-step Active Directory integration creates a rich library of contacts that are searchable by name and department, right from the . No longer will you have to wonder which physicians work in endocrinology or what nurses cover the ED.
6. Avoid Communication Errors and Duplicate Procedures
Effective patient care often relies on the time and talents of multiple doctors, nurses and specialists. Which is why QliqSOFT introduced CareChannels - a secure solution that allows care team members to ask questions, exchange patient information and provide updates via patient-focused group messaging from their personal smartphones or desktop computers.Pager messages often require care team members to stop what they’re doing to make a phone call or trip to the nurse’s station. Secure text messaging for healthcare allows clinicians to send and receive detailed orders, patient files, images and videos – eliminating the risk of misunderstanding a verbal order. Secure texting can also help to reduce the occurrence of medication errors and unnecessary or duplicate procedures while maintaining HIPAA compliance.
7. Reduce Notification and Alert Fatigue
The constant beeping from a pager can ultimately be distracting, especially if they are used to notify physicians of non-critical patient requests. This barrage of constant paging can lead to alert and alarm fatigue for physicians, both on site and on-call. QliqSOFT’s secure text messaging solution provides for efficient care team and physician-to-patient communication while helping to reduce the need for overhead paging and alerts.
8. Impact on the Bottom Line
While HIPAA-compliant secure text messaging is still in its early stages, some hospitals are starting to see some clinical benefits. A 2013-2014 study of approximately 11,500 patients at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and Penn Presbyterian Medical center found a 14 percent reduction in overall patient stays when secure texting was used for care coordination, compared to patients whose care teams relied on traditional paging services. The study was conducted by the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and recently published in the Journal of Internal General Medicine.
Test Drive QliqSOFT Today
Are your doctors ready to swap their pagers for HIPAA-compliant secure text messaging? QliqSOFT can get you started. Contact us anytime for a free, 30-minute demo of Qliq, or to register for an account.
