Nurse Call System Integration – Doing More With Less

As the primary caregivers in a hospital, nurses are in the best position to improve the quality of care and patient safety. But with fewer nurses on a floor and less time spent at the bedside, your hospital faces a variety of safety issues and nurses face burnout. In fact, according to the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, nurses only spend between 20 and 30 percent of their time in direct patient care.
Unfortunately, relief is not on the way as the nursing shortage continues. The Department of Health and Human Services predicts that the United States will need 2.8 million nurses by the year 2020, one million more than the projected supply. So how does a health care facility improve quality of care with fewer caretakers?

Empowering Nurses With The Right Communication Tools
Integrated Messaging Solutions offer mobile event notification middleware solutions that integrate nurse call systems with wireless telephones, Vocera badges, and pagers. This improves staff productivity, reduces response times to patient requests, helps increase overall patient satisfaction, and improves nurse satisfaction with a sharp cut in walk time. By delivering a message directly to the appropriate nurse carrying a wireless device, the IMS solution works with the nurse call system to enable the nurse to respond quickly to a patient need or request. This advanced technology allows nurses to press a single button on their wireless phone and speak directly to the patient, eliminating the time it takes to walk to the patient's room. Your staff can be mobile, spending more time on important tasks instead of stationed at the nursing desk awaiting incoming requests. Not only does mobile event notification middleware alert nurses to requests and emergencies within seconds, but it also give nurses the ability to escalate an event notification if he or she is unavailable. This ability to communicate or forward messages reduces stress by eliminating the feeling of being needed in all places at once.

Creating An Automatic Audit Trail
Our system creates an audit trail of events and how they were handled, saving nurses hours of paperwork to document patient activities. As hospitals now face unannounced audits by the Joint Commission, automating paperwork means reports are ready at the touch of a button. This automation increases caretaker productivity and accuracy, but more importantly, it puts the nurse back at the bedside, improving quality of care and patient safety.

Increasing Patient Satisfaction
Linking your nurse call system with nurses' wireless devices can increase your patient satisfaction, thereby increasing your hospital's opportunity for a favorable post-visit review. As Medicare now pays on a performance-based system, hospitals must look for ways to improve the patient experience to receive funding. Providing patients the ability to communicate with their assigned nurse within seconds of a call offers a less stressful environment for the patient. Knowing that a caretaker is close and health is being closely monitored can relieve anxiety. Improving patient communication, increasing staff efficiency and retention, as well as enabling nurses to focus on patient care are just a few of the many benefits IMS can offer your facility.

Learn more about Integrated Messaging Solutions line of Commtech pagers, Messaging Terminals, and Paging Transmitters.

Contact Sales to find out how Integrated Messaging Solutions could help stream line your communications.