UC in Healthcare: Structure and Experience
My UniComm Consulting partner, Don Van Doren, posted "Unified Communications in Health Care," an article that we wrote with another UC consultant and two healthcare IT consultants in late 2009. The article offers three important examples of UC optimizing business processes in in-patient healthcare.
In our UniComm Consulting Healthcare engagements, we are able to represent the full range of hospital communications requirements in seven use cases. Each use case defines the communications activities of the specific role within the specific value chain processes. Three of these roles, the care teams, the physicians, and the medical support departments, are closely linked to the Hospital Revenue Cycle, i.e. the entire set of processes involved in delivering the promised care in return for the reimbursements that allow the hospital and the associated healthcare professionals to continue to deliver service.
A hospital revenue cycle is very communications intensive, with major implications as the article outlines. Our evaluation of the communications flows organizes them into three categories:
- Patient Administration including admit; transfer; discharge; and reimbursement
- Treatment Management including implementation of the treatment plan; consultation; treatment plan adjustments; charting; and quality assurance.
- Exception Management and Response including exceptional result notification; alerts, codes and exceptions; resource identification and access; patient-initiated requests; and shift handoffs.
Each of the steps listed in these three categories is subject to delays, errors and rework if communications are not effective.
Fortunately, Unified Communications can address these points. In addition to the examples in the article, UniComm Consulting is working with our clients to address area with high propensity to delay or rework (i.e. making multiple calls to find a resource). At this stage, our efforts are focused primarily on the Exception Management and Response category, since it is perhaps the most communications intensive.
A current project is creating a real-time Care Provider mobile application that will deliver patient-related notifications and will assist Care Providers in finding the correct resource based on current assignments (on shift, on call, on service) and patient responsibilities. The application is delivered via web services to WiFi (in house) and cellular (for physicians not on site) devices. In this case, the iPhone and iPod Touch are the preferred devices, with the iPod Touch representing the lowest cost of ownership, even less than text paging services.
Key UC learning comes from our engagements:
1. The UC applications do not require an upgrade to the Hospital’s or Healthcare organization’s PBX. In fact, it is often better if the PBX environment is not being changed at the same time that the UC applications are being implemented, since that reduces the number of moving parts and lowers the overall project risk.
2. The consumer/business mobile wireless devices have far surpassed the IP PBX providers’ mobile devices in both higher functionality and lower cost. While the IP PBX providers often have applications developed that use their private branded WiFi or DECT phones, the Systems Integrators and the HealthCare IT organizations are easily creating more functional interfaces on the consumer/mobile business devices. Perhaps the IP PBX providers would be well advised to invest in interfaces to those devices as a product offering in lieu of the private brand units.
3. The Electronic Health Record (EHR) software companies are making major advances in delivering information to the Care Providers. Most EHR companies offer interfaces PCs, Tablets, and the consumer/business mobile wireless devices. It seems likely that Healthcare UC applications will exist primarily in the applications domain, with interfaces to the communications servers when communications (Instant messaging/texting, messaging, voice communication, shared information viewing, or even video communications) are needed.
The first point may be the most significant for managing costs and ROI. Unless a new building compels investment in the IP PBX infrastructure, healthcare organizations can get the UC-based Revenue Cycle improvements much sooner, and for lower costs, by focusing on those UC applications. If a new building compels a PBX upgrade, then focus on the UC applications can often lower that investment by reducing the number and cost of IP PBX end-points and by replacing or eliminating voice communications by visual notifications and streamlined workflows.
Attention to the priority of UC applications will also optimize the utilization of the available creative resources, both healthcare professionals and IT staff.
It is clear to us that UC offers high returns in the Healthcare industry. The case studies of UC successes continue to accumulate and we encourage Healthcare executives – CEO, Chiefs of Service, Directors of Nursing, CIOs and the IT teams – to include UC as a high priority in their strategic plans.
Your comments are welcome. Contact mparker@unicommconsulting.com if you wish to expand this discussion relative to the industry or to your own healthcare organization.