PRArticles
PRToday
Publicity tips that can help you increase your sales leads
PowerPR: Articles
Healthcare Paging at the Speed of Life
Date: 04/27/2007
While hospitals have more lifesaving capability than ever, advanced equipment and procedures are inadequate without an ability to page quickly among doctors, nurses, specialists, and other healthcare professionals. Yet for too long hospitals have been hindered by a patchwork of paging systems with slow, uncertain delivery and undue complexity.
Fortunately, next generation paging management technology is allowing proactive hospitals to deliver and confirm transmission in as little as two seconds while integrating onsite-offsite paging. It's also simplifying coordination by providing capabilities such as two-way communication and administrative grouping/regrouping of staff on-the-fly from any computer browser screen, even remotely. The end result is proving to be faster, easier, more coordinated medical care with fewer required resources.
The drawbacks of traditional paging systems
Most hospitals using a commercial paging system or an older, onsite paging system find there are significant limitations to both. These traditional paging systems are typically not integrated with and cannot handle the full-range of sources and destinations needed -- from nurse call stations and patient monitoring equipment, to local onsite pagers, commercial pagers, PDAs, wireless phones, cell phones and email addresses. This can delay message delivery and needed response to a patient's condition.
Message delivery can take up to ten minutes or more on systems when staff must notice a nurse call alert, type and direct a response to a commercial paging system. Because commercial paging systems operate on a first in, first out basis with no ability to prioritize, sometimes hundreds of commercial pages are delivered before critical hospital pages are sent; and slow, dial-up modem connections can further delay message delivery.
Pager reliability can be an issue as well, particularly in locations such as building interiors, elevators, and basements, where commercial systems tend to offer partial coverage due to distance from a transmitter or signal interference. Administrative bottlenecks can slow traditional paging management systems, such as when the IT department must make individual or group paging changes, or when checking cumbersome lists is required.
Finally, the cost of commercial paging systems can escalate when a hospital surpasses its allotted monthly minutes. This can occur quickly when each doctor or nurse may send or receive tens of pages a day.
Faster, better, more coordinated and reliable healthcare
To expedite its ability to deliver quality healthcare, St. Clair Hospital in Mount Lebanon, Pennsylvania, sought to streamline its onsite-offsite paging integration. Their previous paging system, for example, required a secretary in some areas to track down and deliver messages to nurses on the floor, and wasn't fully integrated with nurse call stations. Nurses, too, sometimes waited for responses from doctors who were busy with other patients or at other facilities.
"Whether for medical emergencies or routine care, responding with the right treatment at the right time can save and sustain lives," says Gary Steiner, St. Clair Hospital's Telcom Administrator. "We wanted to minimize the time patients or staff spent waiting for help or input from others."
St. Clair Hospital turned to the PageRouter Paging Management System, by Canamex Communications Corporation, a leading manufacturer of paging management systems for healthcare facilities. The company handled all hardware and software set up, which is easy to maintain because it doesn't require network installation or information technology department oversight. Steiner appreciates the way the advanced paging management technology is able to integrate communication among a full-range of sources and destinations from nurse call stations and patient monitoring equipment, to local onsite pagers, commercial pagers, PDAs, wireless phones, cell phones, email addresses, and two-way radios.
"With the PageRouter system it just takes two seconds from the time the patient pulls nurse call until the attending nurse's pager is ringing and explanatory text is supplied," says Steiner. "The nurse knows not only which patient pulled the cord, but also in which area of the patient's room it was pulled whether lavatory, bedside, or emergency call."
According to Steiner, the system supplies a patient response safety net, which has freed up departmental secretaries to do their work and allowed floor nurses to respond much faster to patients' needs. If the attending nurse doesn't respond to a nurse call in certain amount of time, it first re-pages her then pages others in the area until the call is answered. If a colleague handles the call, she simply hits the cancel button and everyone is informed within seconds that the nurse call has been handled.
It is in emergency situations, however, that Steiner feels the advanced PageRouter paging system may be most useful. "From any phone, staff can dial a three-digit pager number, a callback number, and select a prepared message to send individuals or an emergency response team," says Steiner. "The right individuals or teams are automatically paged in seconds whether they're onsite or offsite."
The PageRouter paging management system can also streamline two-way communication, such as between doctor and floor nurse or teams of specialists. From any browser-based network computer, for instance, a nurse could text message a doctor's PDA or Blackberry with as few as three mouse-clicks and receive a nearly instant reply on her own pager. Via the system's email capability, a doctor at a conference in Chicago, for example, could answer a floor nurse's questions regarding medication, patient condition, and even grant permissions. Alternately, a local cardiac team awaiting a heart transplant from out-of-state could be kept fully apprised while making their own rounds.
"By getting both critical and routine information to the right people as soon as it's available, the paging management system allows us to focus on effective patient care," says Steiner. "It's a simple, cost-effective way to help medical professionals take care of patients better and faster by removing communicative and administrative bottlenecks."
In order to speed care and improve pager reliability, St. Ann's Community, a long-term care facility in Rochester, New York, was ready to move beyond an older onsite paging system and the use of a commercial paging company.
"Pager coverage was inconsistent, especially in the elevators and basements, and we sometimes resorted to phone tag to dispatch staff for admissions and discharges," says Jack Pease, Senior VP Administrator for St. Ann's Community. "To better serve our residents and increase our responsiveness to their needs, we sought a faster, more reliable, and flexible paging system that would integrate our onsite-offsite paging requirements."
When St. Ann's implemented the PageRouter Paging Management System, Pease found that pages reached all areas of its 19-story and 10-story facilities within seconds. Because the system automatically monitors and re-transmits pages if transmission is unconfirmed, it further strengthened reliability; and automatic documentation of all pages by pager and time of transmission offered some desired liability protection as well.
This paging management system can help administrators adjust to inevitable last minute staffing changes with a speed and flexibility not found in traditional paging systems, which often require IT department involvement. Instead, from any computer browser screen, even remotely from home, supervisors can make work groups on-the-fly. They can add and remove staff from groups or departments as easily as dragging and dropping a name into the group or department via Windows-type visual maps.
"With the PageRouter system, our caregivers respond to residents' needs faster and more expertly than ever," says Pease. "We've found it especially helpful in grouping staff on admissions and discharges, so residents feel right at home and get the care they need. The ability to quickly coordinate our staff and resources, while important in routine care, would be truly essential for any emergency or disaster when every second counts."
"By integrating our onsite-offsite paging into one reliable system, we're actually saving money every month by avoiding excessive commercial paging charges and other fees," concludes Pease. "Any facility wanting to deliver better, faster healthcare with fewer required resources should look into an advanced paging management system."
Canamex Communications Corporation, a leading manufacturer of paging management systems for the healthcare market, is the developer of the PageRouter Paging Management System and the popular QUIKPAGER Wireless product line. For more info, call Canamex Communications Corporation at 888-387-4205 for a "live" web demo; fax 905-475-5568; visit www.pagewireless.com ; or write to them at 200 Riviera Drive, Markham, Ontario, L34 5M1, Canada.
Del Williams is a technical writer based in Torrance, California.
For more information regarding our marketing publicity services or any sales questions please contact John Elliott.
To view our current job listings go here: jobs.
For information regarding using articles from our news section, editor request and the like, please contact press.