28 DEC, 2021
7 Minutes
For decades, pagers have provided a fast, secure way for busy healthcare professionals to request attention. But time spent waiting for a call back or tracking someone down is time you can no longer afford to lose. It’s time to ditch the pagers and find a smarter way to connect your care teams. Here are five reasons hospitals like yours have made the switch to secure mobile messaging with the Voalte Mobile solutions from Hillrom.
1. Save Time
Pagers are good at requesting communication. But what if you could skip that step and share crucial information from the start? Messaging through the Voalte Mobile smartphone solutions streamlines the communication process, reducing steps and costly delays.
Case in Point
"There’s a faster turnaround time for getting answers to questions and getting new orders. We’re able to relay a critical order or a critical lab value that comes back to let the physician know that something is off with the patient. They can put in a new order, and we can go ahead and give a medicine or an intervention much more quickly."
Kelly Kucia, Staff Nurse, UConn Health (Farmington, CT)
2. Lighten Your Load
Lose the hardware. Keep the critical information. With Voalte Mobile Solution, you can still receive all the information that used to come through the pager. Now you will receive those notifications as text messages on one device instead of multiple. And better yet, that information will be securely stored so you can come back to it anytime, anywhere.
Case in Point
“Our nurses were carrying hospital-provided pagers, wireless phones, separate pagers designed to alert them of critical patient alarms … there were too many bells and beeps requiring attention; not to mention their pockets were literally overflowing with electronic devices.”
Ron Rutherford, RN, Director of Informatics, Huntington Memorial Hospital (Pasadena, CA)
3. Get More Information, Faster
Pagers and standard text messages are limited in terms of the volume and types of information they can display (due to patient privacy restrictions). With Voalte Mobile’s Solution secure messaging, you can send more detailed messages with the context your care team needs to inform their decisions. You can even share images – for example, sending EKG results to providers for better insights in a hurry.
Case in Point
“The Voalte app offers so much more opportunity as far as patient-sensitive information that can be shared and discussed, compared to paging or standard text messaging. EKGs, for example, are a big topic. When we can get those images in front of providers, they can help address whatever is going on.” Brian Bell, RN, Director of ICU, Ascension St. Vincent Evansville (Evansville, IN)
4. Maintain Security
Protecting sensitive patient data is hugely important in care team communications — and it’s a major reason some hospitals stick with pagers instead of moving to text messaging solutions. The Voalte Mobile app encrypts text messages, shielding protected health information from disclosure and supporting compliance with HIPAA mandates.
Case in Point
"Once we set the goal of combining all our communication on one device, we chose Voalte. The nurse no longer has to carry a pager, a wireless phone and another device to send text messages. While there are other texting solutions, we wanted to make sure the security of our text messages is protected, and I don't think any other provider or service could do all that for us."
Linda Minghella, Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Boulder Community Health (Boulder, CO)
5. Take Control of How — and When — You Communicate
Pagers don’t always work reliably outside the hospital. Voalte Mobile Solution keeps you connected from anywhere, any time. And don’t worry about getting notifications on your cell phone at all hours–the app lets you easily set when you want notifications and when you don’t.
Case in Point
“I live across a state line from my hospital – so when I was at home, I didn’t receive any pages and I felt kind of lost. When our communications team told me they could route those messages through the Voalte Mobile app, I thought, ‘I wish I’d known that sooner!’”
Brian Bell, RN, Director of ICU, Ascension St. Vincent Evansville (Evansville, IN)
Communication technology should free you up, not weigh you down. Talk to your Hillrom representative today about how the Voalte Mobile Solution— part of the complete Voalte platform — can help you stay connected without all the hardware.
