As health systems expand, healthcare leaders may question whether or not their clinical communication and collaboration (CC&C) solution will adapt as their organization and processes continue to evolve. In addition to technology considerations, healthcare IT and clinical leaders must consider the scalability of the vendor relationship as a major factor in choosing the right CC&C solution.
Selecting the Right CC&C
Healthcare organizations are dynamic with an ever-changing ecosystem of software and hardware solutions. There’s constant evolution in regulatory requirements, organizational goals, mandates, policies, and guidelines, as well as impacts from the adoption of best practices around standardization, optimization, and technology innovation.
TigerConnect Technical Buyer’s Guide
How to Understand the Care Team Collaboration Market
A good CC&C platform streamlines workflows, creating the foundation of clinical communication and collaboration between caregivers, allied health, and administrative users, leading to better outcomes for patients.
Well-developed CC&C solutions enhance care team coordination, care delivery, and patient safety while improving satisfaction, outcomes, and cost savings.
IT Perspective
Successful deployment of a CC&C platform can ease the burden of managing and maintaining disparate applications and lessen the complexity of multiple software integrations and medical device interoperability.
The right solution will also lower the total cost of deployment in the short term and the total cost of ownership in the long term.
Key Considerations
Among the many reasons to choose a vendor invested in your success, selecting one who develops a strong relationship with your stakeholders after go-live will be the most beneficial.
An ongoing vendor relationship, while it may not seem like a technical consideration, shows how data and analytics spark process improvements and greater ROI. Below, we’ll share a few reasons this is important and the factors to consider when selecting a CC&C solution.
Reason #1: Targeted Training Increases ROI
A top-tier vendor who analyzes data from all of its customers will have proof that specific types of training increase adoption among specific types of clinicians. After you go live with your new system, your vendor can provide data that tell your success story:
How many employees are enrolled?
What percentage actively use the platform?
How many messages are being sent?
Which middleware integration use cases are used most often?
The most advanced vendors will have analytics tools that allow them to track these metrics by department or clinician role.
These same metrics from other clients help establish credible, real-time industry benchmarks that can be leveraged in measuring successful adoption. Advanced vendors use those metrics at other sites to identify the slow- and low- adopters, and will have training strategies to increase usage among these users.
Reason #2: Best Practice Insights Refine Your Clinical Workflows
Your vendor will have unique and valuable insights into the most efficient uses of their platform and its middleware/integrations that you can access if you maintain a strong business relationship. These best practices can be selectively implemented to:
Optimize your care delivery process
Scale your applications beyond the scope of the initial investment
Reduce costs through converged systems and centralized management
Establish effective governance around your CC&C platform
The more clinicians and allied healthcare team members use the new platform, the more your organization can reduce patient care time delays. Patients will get their meds, orders, consults, results, and ADT actions faster. This will result in enhanced patient safety and satisfaction, improved organization-wide efficiency and productivity, decreased clinical interruptions and caregiver burnout, and reduced costs.
Questions to Ask
Here are questions you may want to ask the vendors you’re considering:
How do you work with your customers post-implementation to track user and use case adoption, and then look for ways to increase adoption and engagement?
To what extent do you help your customers develop training courses to increase adoption, engagement, and efficiency among end-users?
How do you analyze clinical workflows to develop best practice guidelines?
Final Thoughts
CC&C solutions leverage and deliver advanced capabilities under a single, unified platform that’s integrated with hospital systems like the EHR, nurse call, physiological monitors, smart beds, and lab.
The continued evolution of technologies, among many other factors, adds layers of complexity to choosing the best fit for your organization.
That’s why we created the Technical Buyer’s Guide for IT and clinical decision-makers to clarify the most important elements when considering the adoption of a CC&C platform. Check it out, and reach out to us any time with questions or to request a demo.
Will O’Connor, M.D. is the Chief Medical Information Officer at TigerConnect. As a physician executive with more than 20 years of healthcare experience, Will is a passionate advocate for rapid advancement across the healthcare industry.
