Updated on May 10, 2022 by Jordan McGlone
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Efficiency is the number one factor in helping save lives, giving hospitals financial incentives, and ultimately helping hospitals and clinical settings to operate indefinitely. No clinical setting can provide care for patients without the use of comprehensive central and organized patient care delivery systems.
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Why Interoperability Is More Critical than Ever
Healthcare is on the brink of a major evolution. The revolutionary Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA) is now live. This marks a significant step in the direction of national interoperability, with the eventual goal of facilitating inter-organizational connectivity and enabling patient access to their medical records.
Just to give you some background: TEFCA is a product of the 21st Century Cures Act. It essentially formed a foundation for national interoperability for health information. Building on previous efforts, it was launched to enable data exchange and ultimately develop a single on-ramp to interoperability.
At this point, TEFCA is still in its infancy. Yet, we expect it to spark a lot of changes in the healthcare industry and for their related service providers, much in the way that HIPAA did nearly three decades ago. With a shift in focus from the digitization of health data to interoperability, will help medical professionals sort through the patient data that they are currently inundated with and find useful information to provide better care.
These days, digital health data goes far beyond the electronic medical record (EMR). Electronic health data can be easily gathered and accessed from a wide range of sources, including connected IoT devices and mobile apps. Many healthcare organizations today struggle to figure out how to identify the most crucial data points, share them throughout the healthcare network, and turn that data into knowledge for more holistic patient care.
More than just collecting and archiving copious amounts of healthcare data constitutes being “data-driven.” It necessitates having the ability to quickly share, evaluate, and retrieve the data required to motivate behavior. This is exactly why TEFCA is needed now. It will provide a technology infrastructure based on transparent standards that facilitate the exchange of PHI while also enabling healthcare organizations to use current technologies and adapt their organizational structures.
Benefits of Supporting Centralized Healthcare & Interoperability
With the advancement of healthcare technology, advanced centralized care delivery systems can aid in the interoperability and efficiency of patient care. At PatientCalls, we provide innovative and integrated solutions to help centralize your care delivery in hospitals. Below are some of the many benefits of centralizing your current hospital functions for patient care, financial gain, and employee morale.
1. More efficiency leads to less stress.
When a hospital is running efficiently, this leads to less stress amongst hospital staff. Less stress can have a wide range of benefits, including:
- Improved morale
- Improved patient care
- Less mistakes
- Less burnout
- Less turnover
All of these benefits are incredibly crucial for clinical staff and for saving lives, especially now during the COVID-19 pandemic. A centralized system consisting of call-centers, state-of-the-art point of care systems, and healthcare technology makes all the difference for the nursing and medical support staff that make it their mission to treat patients in the most efficient way possible.
2. Centralized delivery systems provide easy reference.
Gone are the days where nursing staff had to dig through piles of charts to find the right medication for a patient, the number of beds available, or even the staff on-call. All of this information can be easily accessible with the help of integrated solutions, such as:
- Shared healthcare systems
- Shared patient charts
- Secure text messaging
- Modernized/ computerized charting
- Use of voice messaging systems
3. Gain more efficient bed usage.
John Hopkins medical center has said the biggest improvement they have seen from using a centralized care delivery system is the ability to utilize a bed as efficiently as possible. During the pandemic, and during other critical emergencies, having open beds is critical to help save lives and have room for incoming patients.
Using a centralized system that uses advanced healthcare technology can help hospital staff make better predictions about their bed usage. Advanced healthcare technology is now equipped with algorithms that can predict things such as:
- How much care a patient will need
- How long they will remain in the hospital
- What the best treatment method will be to reduce their stay at the hospital
- What treatment will be used to benefit the hospital in a way that is cost efficient
4. Support interoperability across patient care channels.
It takes a village to be able to provide patient care and save the lives of critical patients. From dispatching an ambulance or even helicopter services, to dispatching emergency law enforcement personnel, centralized command centers can help hospital organizations improve interoperability among a variety of different channels.
Using a centralized system translates into real benefits with:
- Reduced response times
- Reduced mortality rates
- Decreased length of hospital stays
- Decreased length of travel for patients to receive care
5. Shorter hospital stays and visits for patients.
How can centralized systems decrease hospital stays? The sooner a patient is provided care, the sooner medical providers are able to stabilize them and prevent complications from arising that could potentially complicate and extend their stay at the hospital. Take the following scenario:
A patient suffers from a burst appendix while shopping at a store. They need surgery to be treated immediately. However, without a centrally organized command center, there is decreased response time to get to the patient, and a lack of available beds. This prevents our patient from getting the surgery they desperately need. This, in turn, leads to complications such as infection, increased bleeding, and increased length of recovery time.
Decreased hospital stays aren’t just good for the patient, but they lead to more available beds sooner for the patients that desperately need them to recover.
6. Improve measurable outcomes.
Can you measure the amount of lives saved from getting faster care to them? Can you put a measure on the financial gain from open beds that can continue to help fund hospitals, nursing staff, and patient care? With the use of advanced centralized command centers, you can now place a measurable outcome on the benefits of this interoperability amongst hospitals, city dispatch centers, fire departments, and much more.
Related article: Are You Ready for the Smart Hospital Revolution?
Find the Best Integrated Solutions at Patient Calls
Advanced and well-funded hospitals can use expensive technology to help create a centralized command center to improve their patient care. For smaller facilities, there are also a myriad of solutions to improve efficiency, such as secure text messaging, EMR integration, and more. See how Patient Calls can help your clinical setting improve its patient care, boost morale, and experience all the benefits of a centralized command center.
