Streamlining Hospital Communication: Reducing Noise and Improving Patient Care

Hospitalized patients want a quiet atmosphere. They want to be taken care of quickly and efficiently to heal and get out of the hospital. However, all the bells and alarms, announcements, and waiting for hours happen all the time, which leads to sound blindness and patients unnecessarily waiting for care.

One company has focused on reducing the overwhelming sounds while lessening the time patients must wait. Will O'Connor, MD, is the chief medical information officer at TigerConnect. He is an experienced health care executive with over 20 years of expertise in operations, strategic planning, consulting, client delivery, and thought leadership within the health care industry. He spoke with Infection Control Today® (ICT®) about text-based communication and a platform that can streamline clinical workflows, facilitate seamless coordination among care teams, and alleviate nurse burnout. Examples illustrate the positive impact on patient care outcomes and satisfaction, with strategic insights on the evolving landscape of health care communication and the unique features of TigerConnect that enhance efficiency and collaboration among clinicians.

O’Connor explains how Tiger connects secure text-based communication platforms, streamlines clinical workflows, and facilitates seamless coordination among care teams in health care settings.

“It's really at the crux of what we do. We do that by getting the right message to the right person at the right time,” O’Connor said. “We like to think of it as something we eliminate. We call it collaboration waste. Collaboration waste is related to how care team members interact with each other and their hospital systems in a way that erodes value for patients, clinicians, and the hospital. Collaboration waste is the kind of thing that's sort of hidden in plain sight. It's a waste of time here and there. It's a minute here, 2 minutes there, 5 minutes there. It's the nurse having to search for the right doctor. It's a doctor contacting the wrong nurse. It's waiting for someone to call you back. It's having to switch between pagers, landlines, phones, texting, SMS, and fax machines. It's being interrupted by a message or an alarm that shouldn't come to you.”

O’Conner summarized the problem by saying, “It's death by 1000 cuts, and…it's hiding in plain sight. People know it's there, but unless you add it all up in aggregate, you don't know the total damage. And we've seen it where we see nurses, in particular, who are forced to waste an hour or 2 per shift just on collaboration waste, just trying to get in touch with the right people and get the right information.”