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Is your job in healthcare to focus on and serve only the patient or is it also to serve others on the TEAM who are caring for the patient?

Patient centric healthcare as we currently practice it is a failed philosophy. We focus on serving the patient for a finite moment in time even though the patient's journey extends well beyond our specific tasks.

In this mindset, we have a system where we — yes, you and I — cause 400,000 deaths per year and 10,000 serious medical complications every day, costing the U.S. an estimated one trillion dollars a year. Additionally, 80% of these errors occur secondary to miscommunication during transitions of care.

Patient centric healthcare is not enough.  We need to realize that just serving the patient is not enough — we ALSO need to serve the fellow clinicians who are serving the patient. We need patient- and people-centric healthcare.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center is the first hospital on the west coast to use the healthcare communication platform, Pulsara, and the first in the nation to use the company's Prehospital Alerting Package.

BOZEMAN, MT -- SEPTEMBER 12, 2017 -- Stroke is a leading cause of disability and death in the U.S., with close to 800,000 cases each year. The outcome can be devastating, and every delay in care impacts a stroke survivor’s chance at a full recovery. To minimize those delays and make emergency communication more efficient, PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center in Vancouver, Washington, has partnered with several local EMS services to begin using the healthcare communication platform, Pulsara.

PeaceHealth Southwest is the first hospital on the west coast to use Pulsara for STEMI and stroke communications both with EMS and within the hospital, and the first in the nation to use the company's Prehospital Alerting Package for all EMS-transferred patients.

Pulsara was featured in a news clip and article from Fox 45, a local Miami news station, as a service that could "change the game for stroke treatment." The article pointed out that during medical emergencies, every second matters -- particularly when it comes to stroke. "Time is tissue; brain tissue, that is," stated the authors.

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!**

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:

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Research suggests that medical errors play an even bigger role in preventable deaths in U.S. hospitals than previously estimated, and 80 percent of all serious medical errors involve miscommunication. That amounts to 250,000 - 400,000 deaths every year in the U.S. Tools that help medical professionals communicate more quickly, accurately, and collaboratively are critical to saving lives. 

More than fifteen years ago, the Institute of Medicine released a groundbreaking report on the incidence of medical errors in U.S. hospitals. The report suggested as many as 98,000 people die every year from medical errors.[1] Recent analysis from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine says that report may have significantly underestimated the problem, putting the actual number closer to 250,000 - 400,000.[2] In fact, medical error is now considered the third leading cause of death in the U.S.

Identifying Large Vessel Occlusion (LVO) strokes early is integral to successful treatment of the condition. Because mechanical thrombectomy is now the accepted standard of care for treating LVO, the burden to get these patients to an interventional-capable facility lies with the medics who arrive on scene and perform the first assessment. Taking these patients to a facility that does not have interventional capabilities can greatly delay treatment times, and adversely affect patient outcomes.

As an emergency room physician, I experience firsthand the impact of outdated communication systems — how they hamper good patient care and challenge even the most talented, dedicated, and well-trained medical professionals. In emergency situations, when seconds count, fast and accurate communication between care teams can mean the difference between life and death.

Pulsara was featured last week in a news article on Australian news site, The Courier after Ballarat Base Hospital, Pulsara's second international hospital client, began a pilot of the platform. Ballarat will leverage Pulsara to receive real-time information about a patient’s condition from local paramedics to get the entire emergency department, cardiac, neurology and other specialists and departments on the same page.