Say Goodbye to Paper and Pagers: Modernizing Clinical Communication

While investigating the efficiency and efficacy of its communication system, Children’s Hospital Colorado identified communication failures as a factor in virtually all instances of patient harm. Specifically, it found that paper schedules for on-call providers and pager messaging hurt the quality of its communications and were costing the organization time and money. To address these issues, a team integrated the hospital’s on-call schedule with Epic to reduce time wasted on trying to find the correct recipient and replaced pagers with Epic’s Secure Chat. They also developed communication strategies to help users understand both who to contact and which communication method to use.  

Since replacing paper and disconnected systems with digital, integrated tools for clinical communication, Children’s Colorado has saved staff time and eliminated more than 95% of its pagers, saving $220,000 annually in device costs.

Read the full article on EpicShare.