The Best Way to Leverage Your Clinical Collaboration Platform and EHR Together

Methods that large healthcare organizations are using today to drive positive results

While secure texting and EHR-embedded messaging closely resemble one another, clinical collaboration platforms and the EHR differ greatly and should be regarded as separate and equally necessary technologies.

Proving this point are the hundreds of enterprise-level health systems and hospitals maintaining separate instances of TigerConnect and the EHR with no plans to switch. On the list are esteemed organizations like Geisinger Health System and Temple Health, who are using the TigerConnect Clinical Collaboration platform in parallel with Epic EHR to trigger timely alerts around lab results and sepsis alerts. Geisinger reduced critical lab turnaround times from 11 minutes down to 3 while Temple lowered sepsis mortality by as much as 40%. Neither of these outcomes could have been possible without both TigerConnect and Epic working in tandem.

 

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Advanced Integrations for Solving Complex Workflows

Solving complex use cases requires many elements, one of which is access to timely and relevant information. Too often, the requisite patient data is scattered across a range of systems both within and outside of the EHR, like nurse call systems, bedside monitors, ventilators, and others.

Consolidating alerts and alarms from these systems, adding rules around data handling, and then intelligently routing the alerts to the appropriate staff – clinical or otherwise – cuts down on the legwork for nurse teams and allows more timely, efficient care delivery. These integrated alerting capabilities remain outside the bounds of today’s EHRs. Here’s a quick snapshot highlighting some typical clinical collaboration platforms integrations.

On-Call Physician Scheduling

Sophisticated on-call physician scheduling is a critical driver of role-based communication. It helps trauma teams know who to call at 3 am when a specialist is urgently needed or which Cardiologist is rounding on Wednesday. 

VoIP and Wi-Fi Calling Integration

Unfortunately, most hospital communication still happens by phone. Clinical collaboration platforms free clinical and allied health staff from their desks, feature phones, and stations by intelligently routing calls from switchboards and patient rooms. Many of these platforms also integrate with a hospital’s PBX system, further supporting the organization’s unified communications strategy while EHRs leave this up to the customer to deal with.

Cloud-based Middleware

The digital world has moved to the cloud. Unfortunately, most large-scale EHRs still operate on-premise. The flexibility, scalability, and multi-tenant benefits of cloud-native platforms move the cost of the solution from a capital expenditure to an operating expenditure, preserving the budget for hardware upgrades and other physical goods.

Outsized Value for a Tiny Fraction of the Cost of an EHR

By now, you’re aware of the differences between a secure texting solution and a clinical collaboration platform. To put it succinctly, a clinical collaboration platform provides HIPAA-compliant communication designed with healthcare systems in mind. More than secure texting, clinical collaboration platforms provide the context in the form of patient data from clinical integrations. Streamlining patient care and enhancing patient outcomes.  

Fortunately, clinical collaboration platforms generally cost a small fraction of the total EHR spend. In most health systems, the EHR consumes on average 70% of the IT budget, leaving a scant 30% for the remaining 250 or so non-EHR software solutions; so if you haven’t performed an EHR audit lately, it might be time. Often, the excess funds revealed from such an audit can be reallocated to the purchase or upgrade of a clinical collaboration platform.

Still have questions or would like to learn more? No problem. Download this eBook to learn how TigerConnect can turbocharge your EHR with one collaboration solution that improves outcomes, accelerates care delivery, and elevates the patient experience.

Tags: EHR messaging, Clinical Collaboration Platform, EHR Inefficiencies, EHR, EHR integration