Healthcare organizations experience a broad range of issues that affect the quality of patient care delivery and other operations. Most of these issues can be addressed with the use of informatics technologies and tools. One of the gaps that I have noted in my healthcare organization is the ability to achieve secure communication between health providers. Different healthcare professionals and teams are expected to deliver high quality patient care through coordination and collaboration (West, Lustik & Hopkinson, 2019). As such, the sharing of information between providers and ensuring a HIPAA- compliant communication and messaging is crucial to ensure quality and timely delivery of patient care.
The gap of lack of information access is affecting the organization in a wide range of ways. For instance, nurses and other healthcare professionals cannot receive timely alerts and messages in order to take action and provide care to patients. Different healthcare professionals cannot reach the right person or group instantly without needing to know names, numbers, or who’s on call (West, Lustik & Hopkinson, 2019). Besides, the gap means that the health professionals cannot streamline triage and handoff communication. They cannot effectively communicate with their colleagues as they lack an appropriate platform for communicating with groups and receiving real-time notification.
The informatics technology that I recommend for addressing this gap is Vocera badge. This application has been adopted to ensure that providers receive alert notifications in real time. This ensures that the healthcare teams are able to deliver patient care in a timely and effective manner. Providers can also communicate in group setting to promote collaborative practice of care delivery (Joslin et al., 2016). Overall, implementing the Vocera Badge solution is important to promote HIPAA-compliant communication.
References
Joslin, J. D., Goldberger, D., Johnson, L., & Waltz, D. P. (2016). Use of the Vocera communications badge improves public safety response times. Emergency Medicine International, 2016, 1-3. https://doi.org/10.1155/2016/7158268
West, G. F., Lustik, M. B., & Hopkinson, S. G. (2019). Usability of and satisfaction with Vocera wireless communication. CIN: Computers, Informatics, Nursing, 37(4), 229-234. https://doi.org/10.1097/cin.0000000000000509