Years ago, a wise COO told me, “I can’t help you if I don’t know what you need.” When dealing with a problem or issue, the first step is to understand the nature of the challenge. The same holds true of nursing practice issues or barriers. Speculation or assumptions about the communication, resources and support needs of nurses at the bedside may lead to wasted time, misunderstanding, and even mistrust and loss of engagement.    

In an effort to fully understand the end users of our products, Voalte partnered with American Nurse Today, the Official Journal of the American Nurses Association, to conduct a national survey of nursing leaders and staff nurses. The purpose of the survey was to solicit their perceptions of the work environment related to time available for care coordination and patient needs, devices available for communication, and support for the effective use of technology.  

Now is the time to fully understand the nursing care micro-system and the dynamics of daily communication between stakeholders. Changes in our healthcare arena are challenging hospitals to change their care delivery systems and reevaluate both their basis and paradigm for decisions. The operational strategies that have worked for decades will not necessarily work in this reformed healthcare environment. All previous assumptions must be tested, and rejected if they no longer apply. 

More than 1,000 people responded to our survey. With the assistance of Dr. James Lani and Jeanine Glase, the amazing biostatisticians at Statistic Solutions, we compiled the main findings into a Special Report: “Top 10 Clinical Communication Trends.” For those interested in nursing workflow and communication, this report is a must-read for insight into the clinical communication landscape in the nation’s hospitals. Once you understand the challenges, you can start coming up with solutions.

I am thrilled to have joined Voalte as VP of Product and Alliance Management. As the leader of the Product Management team, my primary role is to make sure we build the right product, to be available at the right time, and designed in the right way to deliver a cost-effective, compelling communication solution for caregivers and support staff. Just as mathematicians can’t live without a calculator, we want clinicians to feel the Voalte empowered smartphone is the best tool to help them deliver a high level of patient safety and quality of care. Of course, no one piece of equipment is a silver bullet that solves every problem, but ultimately we want to deliver an increasingly valuable and powerful tool that is reliable, efficient and – most importantly – effective. 

At Voalte, we understand that to be successful at meeting that lofty objective, the product and alliance/partner teams must go out and talk with nurses and physicians inside and outside the hospital. The participation and guidance of actual users is the foundation of everything we do at Voalte. Based on our users’ proactive input and constant feedback, Voalte has built a solid reputation for designing apps with the functionality and usability that has resulted in a quantum leap in solving the communication challenges of today’s healthcare personnel.

We’re also dedicated to building compelling alliances with companies that make related best-in-class healthcare products that are ideally suited to co-reside on the smartphone with Voalte apps. In certain cases, it makes sense for such products to be tightly integrated with Voalte applications, and in other cases to be more loosely coupled, as in basic interoperability. While the majority of such partnerships will be in software applications, we are actively building alliances with hardware vendors to deliver even more effective uses for our compatible and complementary products. 

Done right, the integration of barcode medication administration (BCMA) and radio frequency identification (RFID), integrated with the smartphone hardware and our leading voice, alarms and text messaging capabilities, will demonstrate our commitment to delivering what nurses and doctors need to provide safe, efficient and effective patient care. Naturally, Voalte is fully engaged with the leading EMR vendors to create clinically compelling applications built on the Voalte communication platform … and is open to many more alliances and uses.

Communication is well recognized as a huge challenge for hospitals. The dynamic environment requires the exchange of a plethora of communication types, such as voice, alarms and text, but also is evolving rapidly to include images, video streaming and voice dictation. Add to this the requirement for managing all communication based on work schedules, real-time availability and roles, responsibilities and certification/licensing levels, and before you know it you’re talking about a truly complex communication challenge.  

In my new role at Voalte, I’m looking forward to helping caregivers do what they do best – saving lives and creating positive patient outcomes. At Voalte, we believe that arming hospital staff and caregivers with a single, versatile communication tool is one of the most significant ways to make a positive difference in healthcare for the 21st century.

Are today’s hospitals creating an environment that encourages healing and recovery?

A 2012 study from the University of Chicago found average noise levels in hospital rooms easily exceeded the recommended 30 decibels, and peak noise levels sometimes approached the decibel level of a chain saw.¹

That sure doesn’t sound therapeutic to me!

At Voalte, we believe reducing hospital noise can improve the patient experience and positively impact HCAHPS scores. Now, there’s evidence that lowering noise also affects patient outcomes. 

In another study last year, Orfeu M. Buxton, Ph.D., of Harvard Medical School found a correlation between patient health and noise levels, stating that lowering the noise level in hospitals “would decrease patient stays and improve healing, and perhaps even reduce readmission rates.”²

He also found that some noises are more disruptive than others. In particular, patient heart rates jumped consistently due to the sound of electronic alarms and ringing telephones.

This anxiety makes perfect sense to me. Imagine being a patient in an unfamiliar setting, away from home, and facing the unknown regarding your health. You might wonder:

- Why are all these alarms going off? Did someone die? Are they for me?
- Why does the nurse keep leaving my room to talk on the phone? Is she talking to my doctor? Why don’t they want me to hear?
- Why is this machine attached to me beeping? What does it mean? Am I taking a turn for the worse? 

Too often, caregivers and the communication tools they use only add to the cacophony … and the anxiety. Many nurses are given phones as their main tool to communicate with other caregivers, departments and doctors. Yet HIPAA requires they don’t discuss clinical matters in front of a patient, so every phone call causes an interruption as the nurse leaves the patient’s bedside to answer the call. If the nurse is too busy to answer, other noisy strategies such as overhead paging attempt to locate them.

Fortunately, there is a solution. Secure text messaging via smartphone can eliminate up to 70 percent of ringing telephones and nearly all overhead paging. Alarm management tools can integrate disjointed devices and assign levels so all alarms are not treated equally.

As scientific evidence supports the importance of lowering the noise level in hospitals, old attitudes are changing gradually. Maybe what will truly push the urgency of this issue will be the new policies linking hospital reimbursement to patient satisfaction.

<sub>1. Jordan C. Yoder, BSE; Paul G. Staisiunas, BA; David O. Meltzer, MD, PhD; Kristen L. Knutson, PhD; Vineet M. Arora, MD, MAPP, Arch Intern Med. 2012;172(1):68-70. doi:10.1001/archinternmed.2011.603.

2. Orfeu M. Buxton, Ph.D., assistant professor, Harvard Medical School, and associate neuroscientist, division of sleep medicine, department of medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston; Gulshan Sharma, M.D., M.P.H., director, Medical Intensive Care Unit, University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston; June 12, 2012, Annals of Internal Medicine.</sub>

“A tipping point is the event of a previously rare phenomenon becoming rapidly and dramatically more common.”

Last year it happened – I can’t put my finger on when it happened – and I am not sure if there was a specific day, week, or month when it occurred, but in 2012, we hit a tipping point.

The tipping point we experienced was the exponential growth of smartphones being used as a communication device at the point-of-care. Nurses, doctors, and hospital administrators have unilaterally proclaimed that legacy VoIP wireless phones, pagers, and voice badges are devices of the past; our caregivers deserve a better communications experience.

We are constantly amazed at what our customers have been able to achieve in the past four years and we are blessed to partner with such an innovative group of healthcare leaders.

So what is in store for 2013– the year past the tipping point? What is the future of smartphones at the point-of-care?

Come check us out at HIMSS13 in New Orleans to see what Voalte has planned for the new year. If you think Voalte was busy last year, just wait and see what we have in store for you in 2013!

During the past few months, it has been my pleasure to join in on various alarm workflow discussions and brainstorm sessions at hospitals. There are a number of systems that can be integrated to iPhones to improve clinical efficiency and patient care: nurse call, physiological monitoring, critical lab results, smartpumps, and smartbeds – are just a start.

These exchanges resulted in the following alarm management observations that are worth sharing:

1. There is no “easy” alarm integration. I have heard hospital executives say in the past, “We’ll just go with an easy alarm integration, like nurse call.” Unfortunately, there is no simple alarm integration. Even routine patient call bell notifications need thorough planning. For example, does the call bell alarm go to a PCA or the RN? Should there be a unit secretary triaging alarms at the central station? Is there a difference between day shift and night shift? What is the escalation path of these alarms? All of these questions need to be answered before an “easy” alarm integration can be done properly.

2. Start simple, and then expand based on end-user feedback. It can be tempting to integrate multiple systems at the start of a project. It is our recommendation to start small, and then grow based off of end-user feedback. This feedback allows you to determine which alarms add value to their day-to-day activity. Alarm fatigue can be mitigated by implementing a “crawl, walk, run” strategy compared to a “big-bang” alarm management approach.

3. Having the right partners makes all the difference. Most hospitals do not have the knowledgeable resources or the time to implement an alarm management strategy. Having the right partners that can give advice from past installations is critical to the success of the project. Any vendor can tie together the technology and backend systems, but a true partner delves beyond the backend “plumbing” to make sure the technology is performing in order to truly assist our clinicians, not just bombarding them with alarms.

Is your organization looking to improve clinical efficiency through an alarm management strategy? When you are ready to give your clinicians the right tool to improve clinical communications, give Voalte a call!

As a young rep starting off in technology and healthcare, I was thrown into a whole new world that I never expected. Immediately, I was given an overwhelming amount of knowledge, talking to some of the best individuals in healthcare. Eight months later and I love every minute of it. I get to develop relationships with the people that make a difference everyday…. Nurses!!!

Tradeshows are nothing new. Almost every b2b company attends a conference of some sort. For me however, the ANCC National Magnet Conference that took place in Los Angeles, California this past month was my very first tradeshow.

The 2012 ANCC National Magnet Conference is where clinicians go to celebrate nursing, let their hair down, and have a good time!! This is the nursing conference to top all nursing conferences. Hospital organizations send their nurses to ANCC to celebrate being designated (or re-designated) as a Magnet Hospital, the highest clinical honor to be had.

What made ANCC so special was that it was a conference dedicated solely to nurses. As a vendor, we were there to show our Voalte solution but we were also there to celebrate clinical excellence. This conference was all about showing nurses a different way to manage the craziness of their daily work lives through our solution, putting a smile on their faces, and making relationships with those that matter most.

The amount of sweat and stress that goes into making this conference happen becomes worth it when you get the chance to speak face-to-face with the nurses. These nurses come from all different backgrounds and environments; each one having a different perspective, but all having the same caring heart that makes them so special. Seeing the a-ha moment after demoing our solution was just icing on the cake.

The take away… The solutions you sell are one thing, but the people you meet and the relationships you make are what really count. ANCC opened my eyes as to why we work hard at doing what we do. It’s a shout out to nurses because they are the ones that matter most!

I eat, sleep, and breathe customer service, and lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how difficult great service is to find anymore.  The wheels started turning while I was reading a Peteac Communications book that examined their personalized customer service model.  Then Voalte participated in a few Fall trade shows and, lo and behold, the theme for one was “Because it’s Personal.”  It seems ironic that everywhere I turn, people are talking about stellar, “above-and-beyond” customer service, yet it’s tough to find companies actually doing anything about it.  But not impossible… 

I was at the grocery store the other day and as I made my way through the checkout, the cashier pleasantly inquired whether I had found everything I needed.  We both chuckled at my usual response: “Yes, as well as several things that I don’t need!”  As she scanned my items, she noticed a bag of lettuce was open.  Before I could blink or ask, the gentleman bagging my groceries was off and running to fetch me an unopened one.  Now, if that’s not stellar customer service, going the extra mile, and making it “personal,” I don’t know what is.

So, how do we at Voalte make personal connections with all of our customers?  We start by providing them with their very own Voalte Care Specialist (VCS).   Each Voalte-integrated hospital has a VCS (our larger sites have two!), who not only knows and practices our Voalte values, but is also a member of the hospital’s local community and is familiar with regional nuances.  Each VCS familiarizes him/herself with the hospital’s unique policies and procedures surrounding Voalte, and gets to know staff on the units.  They make weekly site visits to orientate new Voalters, touch base with veterans, troubleshoot, and above all – listen.   The VCS takes seriously Voalte’s recognition that our users were fundamental in building the app, and are just as critical now as we continue to update and improve it.   VCSs strive to know their hospitals well enough to anticipate (and head off) problems and issues, but they also listen - to users’ suggestions, compliments, comments, and frustrations.  Then they report back to Sarasota.  VCSs play a key role in helping to make a user’s idea become a reality inside the Voalte One solution.

Regardless of the style a company chooses to provide it, excellent customer service, executed well, breeds loyalty.  Period.  Consumers want their experiences to be effortless, and provided flawlessly.  When a company exceeds expectations, not only will they keep coming back, they’ll insist that their friends and colleagues do as well.  Voalte works hard every day to earn new “raving fans.”  Coming up with the VCS program to go the extra mile for our users is just one example of how we stay in tune with their needs.

In other words, we genuinely love running to get the fresh bag of lettuce before y’all ask.  :)   

As a young, fast growing company, trade shows can provide a wealth of knowledge, and lead to an overwhelming amount of success. Two weeks ago, Voalte had the chance to participate in the Cerner Health Conference out in Kansas City, Missouri. We had a booth setup, ready to demonstrate our Voalte One Nursing Communication Solution where we were able to speak face-to-face with current customers in addition to potential customers. Our booth screamed pink and green and our “pink pants crew” triggered lots of attention across the show floor driving more traffic towards our location.   

What made CHC different from other shows I had attended in the past is that it was a user conference. In other words, only Cerner customers were able to attend. In addition, Voalte and Cerner were able to join forces to enhance communication at the point-of-care, by integrating with Cerner on a few different levels at the conference. We showed Voalte One integration at the CareAware Connect station as well as the Alert Link Alarm Management Station. Cerner showcased these products and others in their Solutions Gallery. This Solutions Gallery was an amazing resource of EMR knowledge. We were able to learn as much as possible about their EMR and Middleware platforms, iBus and Alert Link, as well as new up-and-coming Cerner products!   

Looking back, I can’t help but think of CHC’s tagline, “Because it’s personal”. At the end of the conference, I was able to meet face-to-face with hundreds of potential customers, some of which I had been speaking with for seven months or more. Which goes to show you, building relationships before hand is key, but being able to interact face-to-face can make all the difference. And when you stop and think about it, the same is true in healthcare.

Healthcare is personal, shouldn’t clinical communication be personal too? 

Recently I was given the opportunity to travel to California and engage in an onsite meeting. We met with an organization that was seeking out a communications platform to accommodate their new medical campus. Aside from the traditional pink pants buzz, our presence created an overwhelming sense of optimism. After years of handling unintelligent legacy devices, a brief exposure to innovation opened their eyes and left them with a trending notion: change is coming.

The 3 most talked about features included:

1. Texting – Blown away by the increased functionality and customization, nurses immediately gravitated to the personalized texting feature. They understood what texting provided and how it could help improve workflow efficiency. 

2. No Alarm Fatigue – Due to the immense call volume per shift, nurses were cringing at the sound of their phone. A phone call for something as simple as ice-chips? Not anymore. Voalte eliminates 80% of ringing phones, decreases alarm fatigue, and helps streamline communication. Consequently, we have happy nurses and an overall positive end-user experience.

3. One Device – With a legacy phone dangling from her neck, and a “Batman Utility Belt” full of pagers, we bumped into a nurse that set a new Voalte record for devices carried (6). With Voalte, caregivers can shed some device weight with a solution that eliminates excess pagers and phones.

Not only did caregivers embrace the functionality, they also understood the BIG picture. Healthcare is a constantly evolving, ever-changing field. By integrating with Voalte, hospitals are provided with a communication platform that can expand to meet their needs. Overall, our visit opened their eyes to innovation, making a lasting impression upon their staff members with thoughts of pink on their mind...

The release of a new Apple device has become associated with adults behaving like children.  We camp out in sleeping bags with friends (in front of the nearest Apple store).  We stay up until 3 a.m. (to pre-order).  Some of us may even throw mini temper tantrums if delivery is delayed a day (not mentioning any coworker’s names).  And if we’re among the poor souls who have to wait, we become very, very jealous of the “in” crowd’s new toys.  Whether you’re reading this on your shiny new iPhone 5, pining away for one until your upgrade is available in January (moi), or just watching this whole game unfold like a football fan on Sunday, you’re probably aware of the existence of “device envy.” 

It doesn’t matter if you’re a consumer aching to trade in your phone or tablet for a fancier new model, or a healthcare administrator exploring intrahospital communication solutions – there are a few basic questions you should ask yourself before donning a clown costume and jumping on the upgrade bandwagon (Google the origin of “bandwagon” if you didn’t get the Bozo reference – interesting story…).

Is it necessary?
Don’t panic.  Answering “no” doesn’t categorically mean you should halt research on upgrades, but it’s important to understand your own or your facility’s motivations before assessing your options.  A non-essential upgrade may only be realistic when personal, department, or organizational budgets allow.

Is it practical?
Sure, Voalte is the communication solution used by U.S. News and World Report’s top ranked hospital, Massachusetts General.  And, yes, CNET just listed the iPhone as the best cell phone yet again.  But if you oversee a small rural facility that operates sans WiFi, or you’re in the Peace Corps in electricity-free Northern Ghana, no matter how great they sound, well, expensive ice cubes just aren’t that useful for Eskimos.

Does it have a documented history of success?
Whether it’s for posting your Facebook status updates, or its purchase represents a significant investment of hard-earned fundraising dollars, you don’t want to plunk down a hefty chunk of change for a fly-by-night device or solution that may not be around next year, or might not have the resources to provide quality, comprehensive service.  ‘Nuff said.

Is it a long-term solution; can it grow with me/us?
These days, it’s all about the “expanding platform.”  There’s no way around it – the world has changed, and when considering options for both personal and professional devices, your lifestyle or workflows are likely going to dictate that an expanding platform is the only viable solution.  Literally every day, new applications and new uses for existing hardware are developed; you’ll want to have access to them.  Be certain to make a sound investment in a device and company that has the ability to evolve with the dynamic communication landscape we operate in.

So there it is.  Now if you’ll excuse me; I’m off to pull another day from the Pinterest-inspired “Countdown to iPhone 5” calendar I created.