VINELAND, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Practice Unite, a leading mobile health solutions company, and Futura Mobility, a specialist IT services company, today announced that Inspira Health Network has unveiled the results of its Quiet Hospital initiative, demonstrating a 26 percent increase in its HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) scores for hospital quietness across at its Vineland hospital.
Inspira Hospital Network (IHN), consisting of three medical centers and more than 60 locations in New Jersey, partnered with Practice Unite, Futura Mobility and its implementation arm, Pursuit Health Advisors, to improve communications, speed up workflows, as part of its Quiet Hospital program. Inspira saw an opportunity to improve scores measuring noise in their hospitals, which were affected in part by a high volume of overhead pages. By implementing Practice Unite’s communications solution, Inspira was able to eliminate this disturbance to patients. The solution was first deployed at its Vineland location. Overhead pages were cut from 150 a day to only 3 overnight! Patient satisfaction scores for quietness increased by 26 percent as compared to the prior twelve months. This solution was subsequently deployed at its other locations and initial scores are also trending upwards.
Under the Affordable Care Act, patient satisfaction has become even more important. Having a low patient satisfaction or HCAHPS scores can directly impact the financial operations of a healthcare organization as well as its reputation in the community. Over the last year, Inspira’s IT team has been a key part of the healthcare systems Quiet Hospital Initiative that will help to create a better experience for patients in its hospitals.
“We always strive to provide a great patient experience at Inspira,” said Tom Pacek, chief information officer, Inspira Health Network. “It was clear that we needed to reduce the number of overhead pages in our three main facilities. The problem was that our nurses had become dependent on this system to reach physicians. Practice Unite, Futura Mobility and Pursuit Healthcare worked with our IT team to design an innovative solution that has allowed us to all but eliminate overhead paging. This made an immediate impact that is already showing up as increased HCAHPS scores.”
The Practice Unite solution makes it easy for nurses to reach physicians. They send a secure text from their desktop to a secure mobile app on the physician’s phone. The physicians call the nurses back directly by clicking on the message which routes automatically to the nurses at their assigned extension. These extensions can change on a daily basis. The Practice Unite app makes it simple for the nurse to change this daily.
“The impressive increase in patient satisfaction survey results that Inspira has experienced is a direct result of the innovation and creative implementation of our solutions that can be truly customized to meet different hospital, physician and patient needs,” said Adam Turinas, chief executive officer, Practice Unite. “This initiative is part of a long-term roadmap with Inspira to help them improve a wide range of workflow challenges that will help Inspira with its transition to the new model of Value-based care.”
About Practice Unite®
Practice Unite is designed to be a healthcare organization’s platform for HIPAA-compliant mobile communication and collaboration applications. Solutions achieve high physician adoption, are easily tailored to a healthcare organization’s unique needs, and interface with the EHR and other clinical systems. Practice Unite backs solutions with unmatched customer support.
Practice Unite helps customers leverage Smartphone technology to improve their performance, reduce their costs and risk, and improve patient satisfaction. Practice Unite’s solutions include patient-centric in-patient, post-discharge, and long-term care clinical applications for care teams and patients, as well as operational applications that automate bed management, service recovery, and other processes.
Clinical care teams and support staff can easily find each other and communicate using secure text and photos, voice over Wi-Fi, and secure video teleconferencing. Patient-centric collaboration tools include rounding lists, care team texting, and shared patient notes that all synchronize with EHR and ADT systems. Patients can also communicate securely with select members of their care team.
Solutions are tailored to streamline existing clinical workflows, and include delivering critical labs, diagnostic imaging and pathology reports, and consults to clinicians’ mobile devices. This is implemented through HL7 interfaces with the organization’s EHR and other clinical systems.
About Inspira Health Network
Inspira Health Network is a charitable nonprofit health care organization serving communities across southern New Jersey. The network, which traces its roots to 1899, comprises three hospitals, a comprehensive cancer center, several multi-specialty health centers and a total of more than 60 locations. These include urgent care; outpatient imaging and rehabilitation; numerous specialty centers, including sleep medicine, cardiac testing, digestive health and wound care; home care and hospice; and more than 30 primary and specialty physician practices in Gloucester, Cumberland, Salem and Camden counties.
Together with its medical staff of more than 1,100 physicians and other care providers, as well as more than 5,700 employees, Inspira Health Network provides evidence-based care to help each patient achieve the best possible outcome. Accredited by DNV Healthcare, the network’s clinical and support staffs are focused on providing quality care in a safe environment. For more information about Inspira Health Network, visit www.InspiraHealthNetwork.org[InspiraHealthNetwork.org] or call 1-800-INSPIRA.