After having worked for Voalte for six months now people have asked me; “what question do you hear most often in the field?” When explaining what we do to hospital executives the over whelming majority ask, “if Voalte is a smartphone application can we just download it on our personal phones?” 

The simple answer is no, but the underlying importance is the reason why. Nurses all over the country have used different legacy devices ranging from complicated phones to simple single-use pagers. Now days all of the emerging technology is wonderful but we cannot lose focus on the end users. Hospitals are busy places and when a new technology is proposed caregivers are left wondering if they are going to have to learn how to use a new device or system?

This is where, as we say, a full “turn-key” solution is necessary to address the problem. After seeing our solution successfully rolled out at a number of hospitals across the country I have to come to realize that the reason for the success starts with the nurses being receptive and embracing the technology. Our end user training does just that. Our project management team ensures integrations are performed and infrastructure is configured correctly. Our go-live support maintains a successful rollout, while our ongoing supports keeps the solution up and running as it should. Lastly, our “app” in combination with our specialized devices and charging solutions deliver the efficient and effective communication nurses and caregivers need to deliver the best care possible.

It’s more than just about the app…it’s about our people and the overall experience.

Whether you call them a HUC, an NCT, a MST, a UCA, etc., the hospital Unit Secretary is a professional juggler of tasks, Jack of all trades, chief communicator, mission control, and in many cases Mother Hen to everyone with whom they come in contact. Caregivers, Physicians, and patients alike appreciate what they do and reap the benefits from their daily interactions with their Unit Secretaries. Voalte would like to take a moment to recognize these amazing individuals.

The Top 10 Reasons we LOVE our Unit Secretaries:

#10: They work tirelessly

 #9: They are very knowledgeable about the workings of the department
       and are a wealth of information

 #8: They are always willing to lend a helping hand

 #7: They always know where to find everything

 #6: They know who to call in any situation

 #5: They always work hard to help everyone out

 #4: They are in control

 #3: They know how to fix any and all problems

 #2: They keep us organized

 #1: They ROCK!

To all Unit Secretaries all over the world, we acknowledge and value your ongoing commitment to your patients and your team. You make a HUGE impact, one interaction at a time!

Thank you!

Well maybe it’s not perfect, but it’s pretty darn close. Before doing a house wide deployment, many of our sites decide to test run on a single unit. The downfall to just going live with a single unit is that you miss the crucial interaction/communication between units and ancillary departments. The other thing you miss out on is the buy in you get from different groups within the hospital.

The University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics noticed the importance of including departments outside of nursing. UIHC selected a single nursing unit and then included all the Physicians, Residents, Pharmacists, Dieticians, Social Workers, Physical Therapists, and Nursing Administrators that the unit communicated with. Phase One was hugely successful–probably one of the best I have ever seen!

When we went live, users immediately noticed the value of the Voalte One communication tool. Nurses loved the fact that they could find Pharmacists no matter where they were in the building. Residents loved the ability to text Nurses during rounds. Voalte was an all around win with all of the Hospital groups.

However, there were unintended consequences. Now that a few pharmacists, dieticians, and others had trialed Voalte, everyone else now wanted one. I guess it’s a good problem to have…

Voalte does “Service” with more care and attention than anyone else in the business, and at the end of the day, our service component is what makes all the difference when it comes to the implementation, adoption, and success of the Voalte solution.

If you ever start to wonder how we do it, all you have to do is look at our people. Our customer focus extends from our Voalte BFFs to our Engineers. It is completely ingrained in our culture, and it is what makes it a point of pride to earn your “Pink Pants”. We develop such a strong relationship with our customers that they cannot help getting involved too:

“I keep meaning to tell you that Belinda is awesome!! The staff loves her, the managers have even commented that she's great and she's been super to work with… How long until she gets some pink pants? :)” –Jen Lassonde, Senior Project Specialist, Massachusetts General Hospital

I’m a project manager at Voalte, which gives me the unique opportunity to take part in every customer interaction from the project kickoff to post-go-live support. A ton of details go into a full implementation, but there is one detail in particular that I believe is critical to our success, and that is training. Training is the first chance we get to make a lasting impression with our customers, the clinicians.

Our trainers have a tiny window, 60 minutes, to make sure that our clinicians are comfortable with the iPhone and the Voalte One application. They help staff who have never touched a smartphone before conquer their fears and discover how they can benefit from this amazing technology. It takes a unique gift to adapt to different environments and people while maintaining the same exceptional level of service. For that reason, these final quotes go out to our team of talented Voalte Trainers:

“Amy has done a fantastic job. She is a wonderful facilitator and is able to manage large classes with ease. She has provided staff with one-on-one help after class to those who need a little extra practice. The class content is exactly what our staff needs.”  –Clinical Educator, Lurie Children’s Hospital

 

“Great class, GiGi!!!” –RN, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center

 

“I just want to recognize Amy Demski for doing an phenomenal job these past 2 weeks with training. Amy has trained over 1,000 users in 12 days. She has accommodated large class sizes and extra impromptu sessions while providing a high quality education.” –Arnold Butiu, Manager of Clinical Applications, Lurie Children’s Hospital.

I’ve been a Business Development Rep with Voalte for almost six months now. I recently earned my MBA in healthcare administration, but I wasn’t quite ready to find a “desk job.” I took the position with Voalte with excitement and a positive outlook of working for such a young and innovative company. The last six months have flown by and I still cannot believe how much new information my 31 year-old brain has been able to retain. I’ve always wanted to get into healthcare, but I had a hard time taking the leap from the consumer electronics industry.

I also always considered myself a talented salesperson. Do not take this as me gloating, but I’ve always found success in anything that I was selling or managing. But when I started with Voalte, I had to leave all of my old habits at the door. I needed a clean start. Not an easy feat for someone who’s been exposed to sales for quite some time. No longer would I be conducting the same, boring sales processes. Rather I would be entering the complex world of working with hospitals. Not to mention being able to experience first hand the difference our solution has on the industry.

Since I began, I’ve learned just how complex the inner workings of a hospital can be. No two hospitals are alike, yet it seems that we find many of the same communication difficulties at every organization.

Thus far, my development process has kept my responsibilities limited to our office environment. I’ve been on countless conference calls and online meetings, but I have yet to travel outside of the pink and green walls of Voalte…until this week. This week,  I'm taking a weeklong excursion with our VP of Innovation to the great Northeast Region of the United States to visit several hospitals. While this isn’t my first business trip by any means, it is my first with Voalte, and my first visiting hospitals that are not current customers.

I’m not only excited about visiting various hospitals, but also about interacting with the staff first hand, getting a better understanding of what they struggle with on a daily basis and most importantly seeing and learning how Voalte is helping to not only improve their world, but also that of their patients.  I’m also very excited about sharing my new outlook with all of you once I return. Stay tuned for part two of my blog…

These days, there are few things that get me angry. Life is going well - Voalté continues to flourish, I have great family and friends, and I get to wear the coolest outfit in the industry everyday to work. Let me tell you, these pink pants are comfortable! With the exception of my Florida Gators struggling in football, life is good!

However, on January 9, 2012 Eric Wicklund published the following quote in an mHIMSS article about the SpectraLink 8452:

"Emerson says nurses are often left in the background when hospitals develop communication strategies…the 8452 is ideal for providers who have followed a "just good enough" policy for their nurses".

I don't normally call-out other vendors, but this article INFURIATED me.

"Just good enough" policy for their nurses???

I couldn't believe what I was reading.

Beyond claiming this device was "setting the bar" in any category (this phone probably has the tech spec's of a 1990's cellular phone), this company has the audacity to infer that hospitals should undertake a "just good enough" strategy for their nurses. This is contradictory to everything we stand for at Voalté and we aren't going to let this slide without calling it out.

I know if my friends or family are in the hospital, I don't want a nurse with "just good enough" technology taking care of them. I want a nurse that has the best tools and technology possible to take care of my loved ones. Our nurses have extremely demanding jobs and deserve the best - especially when the cost of the best is about the same as "just good enough".

Settling for "just good enough" isn't going to cut it anymore.

So as we kick off the New Year, I have one simple question for you and your administrative team: Is 2012 another year your hospital settles for "just good enough" or is 2012 the year your hospital steps up and makes sure caregivers have the best tools possible to do their job?

There is no time like the present to make the change… and we at Voalté are ready to help every step of the way.

Cheers to a great 2012!

No matter where I go when donning the Voalté scrubs, people stare, and often times (while smiling) ask, "What's with the pink pants?"

This is especially true when attending events such as trade shows, networking meetings, conferences, or even vendor fairs. Curious parties from both IT and clinical pass by to see, use, and demo our unique clinical communication tool – Voalté One.

In addition to Voalté, other vendors are in attendance as well, however, the usual suspects are typically in suit and tie, and as always, my colleagues and I stick out like a horse in a herd of ponies in our pink pants.

So, what's with the pink pants you ask?

It’s not only an expression of our quirky personality and the spunk that we bring to the healthcare industry, but also an external view to what differentiates us as a Company. When we first set-off to start Voalté, we turned to our development partners for some guidance. One of the overlying themes was that there wasn’t a Company that provided exceptional customer service. What we quickly recognized was that there was no Disney, Starbucks or Zappos in terms of the service experience provided by traditional healthcare vendors, and knew that this would be Voalte's opportunity to clearly differentiate itself – which we have.

Our mission is to set a new standard in point-of-care communications, and a key component of this mission, if not THE key component, is the user experience. Part of this experience is our company uniform (i.e. the pink pants and black scrub top) so that besides being memorable in events such as the ones above...we’re also easily identifiable and accessible when we’re out at your hospital during each phase of go live, clinical training and support, or when your Voalté Care Specialist comes back in each and every week to make his or her rounds. It’s part of our promise to make sure that your Voalté experience is nothing short than exceptional. 

Why telephones are the wrong solution for hospital communication.

When you’ve been in the computer software business for as long as I have, some themes tend to come back over and over again. During a recent presentation at a prominent hospital, I was asked, “With what wireless telephones do you compete?” Before I knew it, I time warped back to the 80’s to my Apple days.

I was in charge of Application Software at the time and in talks with a large corporation about the benefits of using an Apple II. The COO, leaned back in his chair and asked,“So Rob, tell me what this Apple II can do that I can’t already do on my Wang Word Processor or my IBM Selectric typewriter.” 

Looking back, I now see that he was asking the wrong question. Apple II computers were not some glorified word processor. They were multi-purpose productivity systems that could type letters, keep the books, prepare proposals and analyze financial statements. He should have asked, “How were desktop computers going to transform my business?”

That’s where the difference between telephones and smartphones come into play. Telephones only do one thing and are slowly becoming a thing of the past. Smart phones are like desktop computers that fit into your pocket. And when you think about it, legacy telephones require that both parties (caller and recipient) be available at the same moment to properly communicate. 

In busy hospitals, this is seldom the case. Caregivers are busy with patients, or family members, or physicians, or pharmacists, or phlebotomists or…a million other things. No one is sitting at a desk waiting for the phone to ring. So buying a telephone, even a wireless telephone, is like buying a Selectric typewriter in 1980 at the dawn of the computer revolution. Do you want to be on the wrong side of the tipping point? Do you think that hot new EMR application is going to run on a telephone?

Popular Mechanics just named the smart phone the number one gadget that changed the world - ahead of television and the bicycle. Smart phones didn’t achieve this because they are better telephones, but because they are changing the meaning of computers…and communication…and business…and education...and…you get my drift. 

Learn to ask the right questions. How are we going to change the meaning of communications among care teams? What amazing things can we expect these highly mobile pocket-sized computers to do and how will it change the patient experience?

Recently, I was privileged to be part of a workflow redesign team for a 75-bed ECC at one of our hospitals. The department had assembled a 20-person cross-functional team to streamline the ECC intake process. Their goal was to improve patient satisfaction scores by improving the time from patient arrival to head-in-bed, with a target goal of 30 minutes.

Because Voalté was being introduced into the department around the same time, we were invited to observe and provide insight into how our communication flow could assist with the project. One specific conversation caught my attention. One of the participants asked “Well, couldn’t we just Voalté them for that?” The others nodded slowly as they turned to me for assurance. “Voalté them?” I was surprised by the choice of words. Before I could answer, another person interjected “Oh yeah. We have Voalté on our floor and we Voalté them every time we have an XYZ problem.” 

What caught me off guard wasn’t the use-model or the problem they were trying to solve with Voalté - it was their use of “Voalté” as a verb. After this encounter, I felt like I heard the same thing at every hospital I visited. I took part in a go-live recently, and within days of using the system, staff members were saying things like “Don’t worry, I’ll Voalté you” and “Please hold while I Voalté that nurse.” How does such a term enter the nurse’s lexicon so quickly?

The only reasonable explanation is that this solution quickly becomes the default form of communication within the hospital almost in the same way that “Google” has come to mean “to search for something on a search engine.” By no means am I trying to compare Voalté to the size or success of Google, but like Google, we’ve chosen a niche problem (Google with search, Voalté with communication) and spent countless hours making it very simple to use. The result is a tool that becomes invaluable to the caregiver’s daily workflow. The fact that Voalté - the noun - enabled that workflow then becomes an afterthought.

Unlike Google, I think everyone at Voalté welcomes this phenomenon. For us, the transformation of the word implies widespread value within the hospital and therefore marks a milestone. It’s another sign that we’re accomplishing the goal set forth in our mission statement: 

BETTER COMMUNICATION MEANS BETTER CAREGIVERS

I love teaching and presenting to groups because I always learn something valuable.

I recently presented at the Florida Sterling Conference for Performance Excellence in Orlando, FL and I was able to share best practices and network with top executives from world-class companies. The annual conference focuses on business excellence and process improvement using the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award framework. The week of concurrent workshops culminates with companies being honored by the Governor of Florida for attaining world-class status by aligning themselves with the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award business model.

The presentation I delivered was entitled “Redefining the Customer Experience”. I have presented at this conference many times before while working as Director of Organizational Effectiveness for The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company. This year I had the honor of presenting on behalf of my new organization, Voalté. I was pleased to find that although I was representing a different company, many individuals who had attended my workshops in the past were able to find me and participate in the session.

As part of the workshop, we were discussing what makes service great. This quote always puts this into perspective for me. “Great service is only great if your customer thinks it is.” Many individuals in the workshop shared examples of how their organization brought this thought to life. I was particularly impressed with one individual’s comment. She described a scenario and went on to say that because she works for a governmental agency, she has many restrictions on what she can and cannot do for her customers legally. The part that really struck me was that her organization took a situation that was consistently perceived as a negative experience by the customer and turned it into customer delight. The example that she shared with me was about how they made the waiting room experience more comfortable. They provided shawls for women just in case they got cold and had extra pairs of glasses for those who weren’t able to read their paperwork.

Others went on to share similar incredible stories. I even learned that there is a city in Florida that has a car dealership with a nail salon and neck massage services inside. All of these ideas really reinforced what Voalté already knows - “Legendary service does not have to cost a lot of money!”  

What are some things your organization has done to improve customer service and enhance customer experience?