Pulsara Blog

Editor's Note: This article was originally posted on Becker's Hospital Review under the title "From communication silos to unified communication: 4 takeaways on a new system for improving the patient journey."

The traditional patient journey is plagued by communication silos. Multiple healthcare providers are involved in a patient's care from start to finish, but many times they don't have the tools needed to communicate effectively with each other. Pulsara enables unified communication that dismantles these silos, providing a single source of truth between disparate care teams that improves emergency care coordination.

In a November webinar hosted by Becker's Hospital Review, Joey Branton, Pulsara's Senior Vice President for Strategic Initiatives, discussed the silos in healthcare communication and described how Pulsara's solution provides improved networked communication with a system of care that scales.

Here are four key takeaways from the presentation:

Editor's Note: On August 11th, EMS1, Fitch & Associates, and the National EMS Management Association released their fourth annual EMS Trend Report, proudly sponsored by Pulsara. Because the articles and advice found within contain such critical subject matter, we've elected to publish each segment one at a time here on our blog. Read, enjoy, share, and take to heart the following information brought to you by the most prestigious thought leaders in EMS. Today's entry is written by Pulsara's very own Chief Marketing Officer, Kris Kaull.

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As COVID-19 continues to shape the landscape of healthcare, many profession-altering changes are here to stay. The most impactful of these is the paradigm shift to the “connected worker.”

While this may be a new term in healthcare, it has been covered extensively in manufacturing. As Natan Linder wrote in Forbes, “For years, we interpreted poor manufacturing outcomes to poor human performance (as much as 70% of mistakes in factories occur on human-centric processes). But things changed with the fundamental insight that humans aren’t actually the problem. Badly designed or overly complex work systems are.”

Healthcare faces even greater challenges. There was a time where a healthcare professional may have shined based on their clinical expertise alone. But this is no longer the case. I met with a neurologist in Seattle who told me that she makes, on average, 17 phone calls before she sees a stroke patient. Consider the time-sensitive tasks and coordination that need to be completed by a team in order to properly treat a critical patient: multiple phone calls, pages, answering services, handwritten notes, and radio communications.

It's difficult to have a healthy team dynamic without good communication. 

But in healthcare, a positive team dynamic isn't the only thing depending on good communication. One retrospective analysis found that communication and teamwork issues were among the most frequent contributing factors to incident reports and adverse events. In fact, one report in the analysis showed that 30% of all surgical procedures included a communication failure. On top of that, 36% of those failures caused delays in treatment time, errors in the surgical procedure, or tension among the care team.

For patients, that's a significant impact on the quality of their care experience. Delays and errors can mean complications, a longer stay in the hospital, and an even longer road to healing. 

Do you ever get tired of repeating yourself as you tell the same patient story multiple different times, to multiple different audiences?

You write on the back of your glove to keep track of what’s happening with your patient on scene and during transport. You deliver your report to the hospital via radio, to let them know what to expect when you arrive. You give an in-person inpatient report when you hand off the patient at the bedside, and you may also have to complete a leave-behind hand-written “short form.” And finally, you’ve got the patient care report that you complete afterward, within 24 hours of the case. 

That’s at least five different times you have to repeat the same basic information to update everyone who needs to be in the know. 

What if there was a better way? (Hint: there is!)

New technology is often an exciting prospect. It's fun to experiment with, especially when it promises to help streamline a cumbersome process. But ultimately, the true test of technology is whether it actually improves the way you do things...and when it comes to technology in healthcare, how it helps you provide better care for your patients.  

So when a group of leading experts and clinicians in Victoria, Australia implemented Pulsara to improve communication between their care teams, they were curious about what the innovative new technology could do for them. But more importantly, they wanted to see what it could do for their patients.

Over the past few years, they have successfully developed a streamlined system for making sure everyone on the team has the right information at the right time. And, they're happy to report, their new system has helped them provide stellar care for their patients.

Change management is hard. Adopting new technology and new workflows can be an exciting process, but that process may also bring hesitance, skepticism, fear, and doubt. It's not easy to change the way you've always done things. 

So when a group of leading experts and clinicians in Victoria, Australia implemented new technology to improve communication between their care teams, they worked hard to make sure that everyone was on the same page. And it worked. They've seen a great deal of success with their strategies, and have successfully developed a streamlined system for making sure everyone on the team has the right information at the right time—a system that their teams now love. 

Patient care involves many moving parts, several teams, and a lot of people. How do you get everybody on the same page, especially when messages have to travel through multiple communication methods before they reach their intended recipient? How do you unite all the disparate teams involved in a patient's healthcare journey—from ambulance to emergency department to specialty teams—into one region-wide system of care? 

Over the last few years, a group of leading experts and clinicians in Victoria, Australia have implemented cutting-edge technology to improve communication between their care teams. They've seen a great deal of success with their strategies, and have developed a streamlined system for making sure everyone on the team has the right information at the right time.  

In this three-part series, you'll hear directly from them on their search for a solution, the results they've seen, and the advice they would offer other systems that want to build their own regional system of care. 

View the full webinar video discussion below, or read on for Part 1 of the full roundtable! (Part 2 and Part 3 can be accessed here.)

EDITOR'S NOTE: Special thanks to Cynthia Bradford Lencioni for writing today's blog post. You can connect with her on LinkedIn. 

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Imagine that you are a paramedic in a rural region who has been summoned by 999 dispatch to the scene of a home accident. All you know is that there is a patient with suspected burns who is counting on you to save his life. When you arrive on scene, you quickly determine that your patient is a young child of about eight years of age with third-degree burns on at least 20% of his body, including his upper torso and head. He is deteriorating rapidly into shock. Given the extent of his injuries, you realize that per protocol, he needs immediate transport to a burn centre. As your partner begins to start an IV, you radio the regional command centre to provide the patient’s status and urgently request critical-care transport via air ambulance. Precious seconds turn into minutes as you stand by waiting for a reply from the command centre with an ETA for the air ambulance team... 

Breakdowns and bottlenecks in healthcare communication systems frequently cause a myriad of delays in patient care. Legacy systems like radios, pagers, fax machines, and multiple phone calls connect clinicians but aren't always able to efficiently get the right message to the right person at the right time. Combined with the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, it's clear that our current systems of communication need to be reimagined. Healthcare officials must begin to think differently. 

Your acute care, collaboration, and coordination solution needs to be scalable and flexible, enabling you to adapt quickly to the dynamic needs of patients and clinicians—and span across all organizations involved in patient care. By replacing legacy systems with one solution that covers the entire care continuum, health providers can achieve reduced treatment times, conserve resources, and improve the lives of both patients and caregivers.

When: The evening of April 27 in the USA; 11 AM on the 28th in New South Wales, Australia

Cost: FREE

Registration: Click here to register

Read on for further details!

With each new phase of the pandemic comes a new set of challenges, and each new need is significant. From COVID testing and new treatment protocols to contact tracing and mass vaccinations, we must concurrently address all these challenges before the nation can begin returning to a renewed sense of normalcy. Modernizing and mobilizing the tools our nation’s first responders – and those who support them – use is now imperative, as we combat the spread of COVID-19.

On Thursday, April 8, from 11:30 am - 12:30 pm MDT, join Pulsara's Vice President of National Accounts, Corey Ricketson, for the session "FirstNet: Tracing and Collaborative Care Coordination." In this session, Corey will discuss how Pulsara's healthcare communications platform is being used by emergency medical personnel to unite distributed teams, enable scalable networked communication, and coordinate patient movement across the continuum of patient care.

Click Here to Register for Free

Recently, Joey Branton, Pulsara's Senior Vice President of Strategic Initiatives, had the opportunity to sit down with Brian Zimmerman of the Becker’s Healthcare Podcast for a chat about "How Collaborative Mobile Communication Solutions are Transforming Healthcare Delivery." During the podcast, Joey and Brian discuss collaborative mobile communication solutions, as well as how these solutions can overlay existing healthcare tools and save hospitals money. 

Listen to the full podcast in the video below, or read on for their full discussion. 

Join Pulsara Regional Sales Manager, Northeast, Forrest Winslow, BSED, RN, NRP on Tuesday, March 23 at 1:15 pm CT for the session 'Plug the Hole! Leveraging Telehealth to Stop System Leakage' during Becker's Telehealth Virtual Forum. In this session, Forrest will take you on a journey from EMS to the ED and then to a hub-to-spoke scenario. You’ll see firsthand how these different organizations leveraged a telehealth platform to identify where system leakage was coming from, how they created automatic referral patterns to mitigate patient transfers, and ultimately increased ROI and patient loyalty.

Pagers have been a staple in healthcare communication since the 1980s. Small, loud, and easily passed from clinician to clinician, pagers have been the constant companions of doctors and nurses for a long time. And in that time, they've been vital tools for communication. 

They have their drawbacks, but there are a few important reasons why pagers have stuck around for so long. One particular feature in the pager's design has ensured their longstanding usefulness for physicians: The loud, obnoxious alerts.

Why is that important? Pagers interrupt workflow. In a good way.

Whether you’re a medic, nurse, physician, coordinator, or QA/QI specialist, the work you do for each patient MATTERS. 

That’s why, at Pulsara, we’ve designed a communication platform that helps every member of a patient’s care team actually FEEL like they’re part of the care team. 

What do EMS and hospital care teams have in common with NASCAR drivers?

Quite a bit, as it turns out. The success or failure of both hinges on one thing: time. 

It might surprise even dedicated fans to learn that all of the cars on the track are limited to the same top speed and horsepower range. With this being the case, how can it be that there is such a large disparity between first and last place?

The answer: The race is won and lost during the pit stop.

During time-sensitive emergencies, sharing data between EMS and the hospital is a vital part of patient care. EMS contacts the hospital via radio report to share information about the patient’s condition and vital signs, letting hospital staff know what to expect when the patient arrives on their doorstep. EMS and the hospital both comply with HIPAA guidelines, and sharing details about the patient’s condition is simply considered an essential part of providing the best possible care for that patient.

But once the patient has been admitted and EMS needs outcome data from the hospital, suddenly the information sharing process isn’t quite as clear. Many hospitals get nervous about the thought of sharing patient data or PHI with EMS agencies.

Why?

HIPAA.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article originally appeared on EMS1.com. Special thanks to our guest author, Sarah Calams of EMS1 BrandFocus. 

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Telehealth applications can help expand the reach of out-of-hospital care to help EMS and hospital providers deliver better patient care, faster

With today’s advanced technology, anyone can use their smartphone, tablet, or computer to connect via real-time video to talk with anyone around the world.

Yet, in the healthcare system, video streaming has remained static, convoluted, and complicated.