Improve Care Coordination and Health Outcomes with Smart Mobility
With workloads becoming more intense, clinicians are struggling to take care of increasing numbers of patients while having less time to do so. As a result, the Physicians Foundation says the majority of doctors (80%) report being at full capacity or overextended in their work. As health care workers juggle a never-ending list of clinical and non-clinical activities, they need to find ways to spend their time with patients and their families more effectively. Facing these challenges, many health care providers are relying on smart mobility tools.
A recent American Medical Association survey revealed that nearly 90% of physicians now see an advantage to using digital health tools. As a result, they’re beginning to use these tools — including mobile devices — to provide better care while reducing stress.
Patients notice the difference that digital health tools can make, too. The following are some of the most important factors in creating a positive patient experience:
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Convenience
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Clinician Responsiveness
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User-friendly technologies
To help providers address time constraints while improving patient satisfaction, more clinicians are using smart mobility solutions to improve care delivery in hospital, telehealth, and home health environments.
Streamline Communication With Mobility Solutions
Mistakes matter in health care. The Joint Commission reveals that miscommunication causes 80% of medical mistakes, leading to poor decisions about care and treatment due to lack of clear information about symptoms and conditions.
Smart mobility solutions support faster, easier transfer of important data to reduce human error and improve communication in several key ways:
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Quickly connecting new clinicians with their supervisors when they need advice — no matter where they are
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Allowing clinicians to rapidly access information at the bedside about medications, medical history, and conditions for enhanced accuracy and streamlined care
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Improving information flow between medical staff and patients
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Ensuring convenient capture and sharing of details in real time so important information isn’t forgotten
By supporting instant access to information, smart mobility solutions increase the speed of diagnosis and allow clinicians to see more patients in less time — without sacrificing the level of care they provide.
Reducing Manual Processes
Integrating cloud-based programs and applications with smart mobility solutions helps health care organizations transition from manual, paper-driven processes to digital workflows that save valuable time.
Consider home health care as an example. Historically, clinicians bring a pen and paper with them, provide necessary services, capture signatures onsite, bring paperwork and notes back to the office, and then enter all that information into a computer. Clinicians can replace this manual process with one device that’s always connected and works in any location.
Among many more features, manual processes that digital workflows can consolidate include:
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Accessing medical information
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Obtaining signatures
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Prescribing medication
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Capturing notes
Instead of juggling paperwork, charts, hard-copy prescriptions, and medical device ordering and fulfillment forms, smart mobility solutions digitize these processes. They also bring organization and accessibility to the heaps of medical data that exist in different formats and platforms.
Smart mobility solutions may also improve satisfaction levels among doctors and nurses. A recent Medscape survey shows that the leading contributor to clinical burnout is the number of administrative tasks (like charting and paperwork) health care providers have to complete. Reducing this stress leads to happier employees.
Automating Tedious Tasks
The United States can’t afford to lose clinicians. Currently, the country expects a shortage of between 200,000 and 450,000 RNs by 2025 as well as an estimated shortage of between 37,800 and 124,000 physicians within the next decade.
The industry is also set to lose many workers who keep administrative health care workflows, like scheduling, benefits approval, prior authorizations, and admission and discharge processes, moving. A projected shortage of more than 3.2 million medical assistants, home health aides, and nursing assistants is on the horizon, according to a Mercer report.
Using smart mobility solutions to automate operational tasks enhances productivity and eliminates inefficiency and waste tied to administrative tasks. Workers spend less time clicking and typing and more time learning about and caring for patients and their families to improve care delivery.
Staff can connect their mobile devices to health care equipment to support greater levels of data visibility while reducing the manual work involved with documenting vitals and lab results to ensure greater levels of accuracy.
Leveraging Smart Mobility to Create New Workflows
Smart mobility solutions serve as the springboard for reimagined workflows, processes, and capabilities that prioritize care and focus on real-time patient needs — whether they’re in a clinic, at the hospital, or at home. This technology helps clinicians in several ways:
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Prioritizing patients based on those with greatest needs
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Quickly onboarding first-time patients and new staff
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Deploying effective and convenient telehealth services
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Remotely monitoring patient information that’s delivered directly to a secure location
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Accessing EHR data from anywhere
With the right technology at their fingertips, health care organizations can change the way they work. Smart mobility solutions allow them to put time and effort toward the tasks that matter — and that will provide the best return on investment.
The data captured when using smart mobility solutions can also build valuable banks of information about clinical outcomes based on the use of medications, medical devices, or treatment options. This information can inform future decision making.
Choose Digital Health Tools that Support Always-On IT
As digital workflows continue to take the place of conventional practices, it’s critical to invest in reliable, dependable, always-on technology with long battery life. Devices also need to withstand frequent cleaning and sanitization as well as exposure to weather conditions and even bodily fluids to maintain healthy environments. After all, what’s the point of transitioning to mobile technology if clinicians trade manual administrative work for device troubleshooting and unexpected system downtime?
Technology solutions must work seamlessly 24/7. Otherwise, one’s entire health care operation can come to a halt, putting patient safety at risk and creating more work for employees.
Investing in mobile platforms and devices will keep clinician focus where it should be — on taking care of patients instead of taking care of devices.
Learn more about Panasonic Connect’s smart mobility solutions for health care.
