The Pulsara Blog   

Healthcare systems must continue to adopt mobile-friendly platforms to meet users' expectations and offer high-quality care.

Many industries have overhauled their businesses to meet consumers’ expectations of using their mobile devices to do everything from checking in for a flight to ordering takeout food. The healthcare industry has been slower to adopt mobile-friendly platforms, but it is increasingly doing so to meet patients’ and health professionals’ needs. But simply taking current methods of communication and putting them on smartphones is not sufficient — platforms must capitalize on the many advantages mobile technology offers in order to truly transform and improve healthcare.

**This post is an excerpt from our eBook, "It's About Time: Addressing the Communication Crisis in Emergency Medicine." Download the full eBook here!**

Researchers find a significant number of communication failures at hospitals. Could they be contributing to preventable patient deaths and disability?

A study in Toronto found that over a two-month period, 14 percent of all pages went to the wrong physician and nearly half of those were emergent or urgent communications.

A study that examined communication failures at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and the Toronto General Hospital in Toronto, Canada, found that over a two-month period, 14 percent of pages were sent to the wrong physician.[12] That’s an estimated 4,300 misdirected pages each year—half of which are related to emergency or urgent matters.

Physician collaboration is associated with fewer patient deaths, readmissions, and emergency room visits.

A study of patients who underwent coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) found that when physicians collaborated more, patients had a 24 percent lower rate of emergency room visits and hospital readmissions, and a 28 percent lower rate of death.[10]

**This post is an excerpt from our eBook, "It's About Time: Addressing the Communication Crisis in Emergency Medicine." Download the full eBook here!**

Physician groups that worked more closely together in caring for patients who underwent coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) procedures were able to produce better patient outcomes, according to recent research.[11] The study examined claims data for 251,630 patients who underwent CABG between 2008 and 2011; the patients received care from 466,243 physicians across more than a thousand health systems. At 60 days post-procedure, patients treated by physician teams with higher levels of cooperation had:

Communication is key when it comes to emergency medicine, and the information you include in your patient radio report can save valuable time for the patient further down the care continuum if done properly. 

In this episode of Progressive Paramedicine, Brandon Means discusses the three most critical components of the patient radio report and what you can do to help put an end to the communication crisis in emergency medicine. 

Listen to this post on the go with Pulsara's new Podcast!

"The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency." -- Bill Gates

I love this quote from Bill Gates. But just recently, I changed my mind about what this quote means to me and what we, as tech companies, do with that information. When I first heard this quote, I took it to mean that if you have an inefficient process then technology won't help you. If you have an efficient process, then apply technology, and it will only make it better. Makes enough sense, right? 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Listen to this post on the go with Pulsara's new Podcast!

Bozeman, MT – July 25, 2017 – Pulsara announced today that the company has been selected as a finalist in this year’s Fierce Innovation Awards: Healthcare Edition 2017, an awards program from the publisher of FierceHealthcare. Pulsara was recognized as a finalist in the category of Digital/Mobile Health Solutions.

Pulsara was selected as a finalist for its innovative, industry leading product, the Pulsara Prehospital Alerting Package. Finalists were selected by a distinguished panel of judges from renowned U.S. hospitals and healthcare systems.  The panel included Terry Booker, VP Corporate and Business Development, Independence Blue Cross (IBC); Roy DeLaMar, Internal Business Communications Manager, Cigna; Neal Ganguly, VP and CIO, JFK Health System; Deborah Gordon, VP Marketing Sales and Product Strategy, Tufts Health Plan; Jessica Grosset, VC of IT, Infrastructure and Operation, Mayo Clinic; Kurt Cwak, CIO, Proliance Surgeons; Roger Neal, CIO and VP, Information Technology, Duncan Regional Hospital; Todd Richardson, Senior VP/CIO, Aspirus; Edward Ricks, VP and CIO, Information Services, Beaufort Memorial Hospital; and Julie Slezak, EVP, Clinical Analytics, GNS Healthcare.

Communication and operational changes at hospitals, and within EMS systems, play key role in recent drop in the death rate from heart attacks. 

Although heart disease is still the number one killer of American adults, in recent years the nation has witnessed a dramatic decrease in the death rate from heart attacks. From 2003 to 2013, the rate at which people in the U.S. died from heart disease dropped 38%.[7]

**This post is an excerpt from our eBook, "It's About Time: Addressing the Communication Crisis in Emergency Medicine." Download the full eBook here!**

This striking improvement can be attributed to a number of factors, including more effective treatments for heart disease and risk factors like high cholesterol and high blood pressure. In addition, fewer people are smoking these days. And notably, some hospitals have made sweeping changes in how they treat people having heart attacks. Many of those changes have not involved new drug therapies or procedures, but simply operational shifts that address patient flow and provider communication.

Listen to this post on the go with Pulsara's new Podcast!

In a stunning development leaked this week to the media, a senior Food and Drug Administration source told journalists that the FDA plans to begin regulating as medical devices certain mobile phones, fax machines, pagers, and some models of egg timers used by healthcare providers for communication and care coordination within the next year. 

………… Fake News!!

The truth is that over the past 5 years, there has been a deregulatory trend in the US with regard to low-risk healthcare software, and the 21st-Century Cures Act (2016) is the latest in that trend. Specifically, the Cures Act provides that software for healthcare communication and logistics does not meet the FDA’s “medical device” definition, or classification, and is therefore not subject to FDA regulation.  The FDA classifications for software as a medical device are based on the intended use of the application and the risk it presents to patient safety.  

Some mobile technology solutions are well suited for bridging specific communication and operational gaps in healthcare—even if technology, on the whole, often frustrates caregivers. 

Listen to this post on the go with Pulsara's new Podcast!

Listen to this post on the go with Pulsara's new Podcast!

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According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the total number of ED visits in the U.S. in 2009 was 16.5% higher than two years before. A consequence of this increased ED traffic is that the average time a patient has to wait to see a provider increased by 25% from 46.5 minutes to 58.1 minutes between 2003 and 2009. Furthermore, this increased traffic strains hospital resources and can be costly for all parties.