A large number of hospitals and clinics are still heavily reliant on outdated, unconnected communication systems such as pagers, faxes, email, landline telephones, and whiteboards. While these communication tools have served the industry well over the years, they are far from efficient and often hamper workflows and certainly increase the cost of healthcare provision.
In other industry sectors, pagers and landlines have been eliminated and new, modern, and efficient communication solutions have been introduced that have been proven to improve communication, collaboration, efficiency, and productivity; however, the healthcare industry has been slow to adopt these solutions.
Healthcare-specific communication tools have been widely available for more than a decade that offer huge benefits over pagers, faxes, and emails and have been shown to improve efficiency and productivity. 10 years ago, early adopters saw huge productivity benefits. The solutions have now evolved into comprehensive clinical communication and collaboration (CC&C) systems that integrate seamlessly with electronic health records and other systems and bring communication in healthcare into the modern age.
TigerConnect is the most widely used CC&C platform in the United States and was one of the first HIPAA-compliant secure messaging platforms to be used in healthcare. The platform provides a suite of tools that have been shown to improve efficiency in virtually all clinical settings. Users report benefits such a shorter wait times, faster treatment in ERs, better bed utilization, faster patient transfers, accelerated patient flow, better staff morale, fewer errors, and improved patient outcomes and satisfaction scores, all of which have helped to significantly reduce costs.
TigerConnect has now announced that its popular CC&C platform has had further enhancements made to better meet the needs of healthcare providers. The enhancements further improve efficiency, quality, outcomes, and the overall patient and provider experience.
“The newly enhanced TigerConnect portfolio empowers healthcare organizations of all sizes to solve complex workflows and communications scenarios from end to end, beginning with a significantly enhanced care collaboration platform,” said TigerConnect “From there, enhancement technologies include simpler, more compassionate patient and family engagement options. Plus, improved alert and event notification and scheduling solutions help ensure hospitals already stretched thin with clinical staffing shortages do not compromise patient care and safety.”
TigerConnect solutions include its Clinical Communication and Collaboration Platform, TigerConnect Alarm Management and Event Notifications, TigerConnect Patient Engagement, and TigerConnect Physician Scheduling. The products are HITRUST CSF-certified, and fully HIPAA-compliant.
The CC&C platform supports instant, secure messaging between clinicians and patient communications. The platform allows the real-time delivery of test results and other protected health information to all members of the care team, and supports voice and video calls in addition to text messages.
Users of the platform can identify the right people to contact, communicate important information to colleagues at shift handovers, and when messages go unanswered, they are automatically escalated. Through efficient and effective communication, workflows are improved, wasted time is eliminated, and care is accelerated.
The TigerConnect platform has recently had a host of new features added following the acquisition of Critical Alert and Call Scheduler. Critical Alert middleware has added alarm management and event notifications, allowing nurses to consume, prioritize and route contextualized alerts and alarm notifications from any nurse station, physiologic monitor, smart bed, or EHR. “This improvement dramatically reduces unnecessary clinical interruptions, alarm fatigue, and sentinel events by separating the signal from the noise, helping to keep already lean nursing teams productive and less prone to burnout,” said TigerConnect.
The acquisition of Call Scheduler allowed TigerConnect to improve the on-call and resident scheduling process, through a new feature called TigerConnect Physician Scheduling. This new feature automates and streamlines clinical communications and ensures everyone knows which doctors and physician assistants to contact at all times, without having to check printed sheets, whiteboards, or spreadsheets. TigerConnect Physician Scheduling also streamlines time-off requests, shift swaps, and calendar access, all of which can be accessed through smartphone and desktop apps.
TigerConnect has also made several improvements to enhance patient engagement solving the common outreach challenges in healthcare. Healthcare providers that adopt the TigerConnect platform have fast, easy, and direct access to patients and their families. The platform makes the sending of appointment reminders simple, intake documents can be collected before a visit, and it is easy to communicate with patients’ families and provide updates during a procedure. After discharge, the platform can be used to conduct remote wound care follow-ups, help patients follow post-visit care plans, and the platform has been invaluable during the pandemic for providing telehealth services.
“Much as enterprise collaboration platforms have fundamentally transformed how businesses collaborate around people, data and integrations, TigerConnect is now revolutionizing healthcare collaboration,” said Brad Brooks, CEO and co-founder, TigerConnect. “Care organizations can communicate and collaborate securely and safely, while absolutely protecting patient privacy in the cloud. This revolution is just beginning as more healthcare data and integrations move to the cloud, and we are proud to be leading the way with platforms and solutions that will enable people and automate workflows.”