Improving Critical Care Workflows at CommonSpirit

Meeting High Demand with an Advanced Communication System

Delivering top-notch care and achieving positive patient outcomes have become more difficult since the pandemic. Increased pressure on care teams has led to strained communication, stress, burnout, and preventable errors due to ineffective communication.

With these obstacles, many organizations are desperate for a way to make clinical communication and collaboration more straightforward. Recent innovations in healthcare technology have now made it possible for large and smaller healthcare organizations to reduce the chaos and feel confident in their ability to achieve better patient outcomes.

 

Coordinating Clinical Workflows at CommonSpirit Listen Now

 

How Secure Messaging Enhances Communication

In the most recent episode of The Connected Care Team podcast, Will O’Connor, M.D., had the pleasure of speaking with Denise Pimintel, Clinical Program Manager at CommonSpirit Telehealth Network System. CommonSpirit provides community health programs, research programs, virtual care services, and home health programs to ensure access to quality care, particularly in areas without substantial infrastructure.

In this episode of The Connected Care Team podcast, Pimintel discusses her background in healthcare, CommonSpirit’s growth, and the improvement of their clinical workflows using modern technology such as secure messaging. By making communication faster and simpler, multiple care teams have achieved more with less stress. 

“Moving to secure texting has been huge. It allows providers to speak to other providers. So, say a hospitalist wants to consult a specialist on a patient that he’s taking care of. All he has to say is, can you please see Mr. X in bed whatever, I think he’s had an MI or whatever.”

Denise Pimintel

Improving Workflows with TigerConnect

Given the organization’s rapid growth since the pandemic, CommonSpirit had to find a way to handle the increased demand. Implementing TigerConnect’s solutions has made it easier to manage clinical care workflows in multiple settings. 

CommonSpirit has fully embraced innovative mobile technology, including secure messaging that allows care teams and patients to communicate quickly and effectively while maintaining confidentiality. Denise described TigerConnect Escalated Messaging, which provides transparent and seamless communication with a quicker response time, as an effective tool.

“The message gets sent at the convenience of the person sending, and when it comes to the recipient, the recipient can choose to either look immediately, delay that look because he’s in the middle of a conversation with somebody else, or pick it up, pass it on to somebody else if we have rules in it to escalate if he hasn’t looked at it in 5 minutes.”

Denise Pimintel

Message escalation becomes valuable when a physician is rendered unavailable and a cannot respond to a message. In this situation, the message would be tagged and rerouted to an alternate care provider on the pre-programmed list. This process ensures that no message goes missed or unanswered ensuring care workflows continue to move along. Not only are patients’ needs met quickly, but secure messaging eliminates poor communication and decreases preventable errors. Due to its versatility, features like escalated messaging have helped healthcare organizations manage multiple clinical workflows, including critical care, acute care and home health.

Listen to The Connected Care Team Podcast

Check out the most recent episode of The Connected Care Team podcast to learn more about CommonSpirit and how they have used TigerConnect Clinical Collaboration to streamline care delivery and coordination.

Tags: critical response, productivity in healthcare, care efficiency, Critical care, efficiency in healthcare, Clinical Communication and Collaboration, Clinical Communication, Clinical Workflows