How to Improve Clinical Communications and Care Coordination
Baystate Health System Implements Secure Messaging

As clinical mobility continues to increase, the efficient communication and collaboration among physicians, nurses and other providers is critical to the delivery of quality patient care. In this environment, health care organizations must find a way to balance the clinical need for better, faster communication while safeguarding protected health information (PHI).

As a health system, accountable care organization (ACO) and health information exchange (HIE) for most of western Massachusetts’ residents, Baystate Health System was facing challenges from delayed communications, potential insecure SMS messaging and inefficient paging workflows. Baystate wanted to improve the efficiency and security of communications across its clinical staff, inside and outside of its facility, and across its ACO and HIE. Hear how, by implementing five simple strategies, Baystate was able to improve communications, HIPAA compliance and clinical workflows through faster response times. In addition, hear how Baystate experienced improved clinical staff satisfaction, process improvement and better security around PHI.

You Will Learn:

• How to unify communications for care providers across multiple locations to securely share patient information across a health information exchange
• The importance of providing secure messaging for providers through their personal or corporately owned smartphone
• How to speed up workflows for on-call and after-hours patient calls through integration with answering services and paging systems
• How securing patient health information while meeting HIPAA compliance with secure, HIPAA-compliant texting is critical