Huntzinger Facilitates Unified Clinical Communications Implementation within an Academic Health System
Background, Opportunities and Challenges
Michigan Medicine identified the need to implement a unified clinical communications (UCC) solution within their health system. In support of their strategy, they sought external expertise to assist in clinical workflow analysis and discovery, as well as deployment and implementation of a UCC solution that would provide clinicians a means to communicate more efficiently via a secure platform.
Huntzinger Engagement
Huntzinger was selected to assist Michigan Medicine with their UCC implementation based on our understanding of the complexity of unified clinical communications as a blend of clinical workflows and technology. Our approach focused on:
- Project management facilitation and definition of a detailed rollout strategy
- Current and future state clinical workflow analysis and documentation
- Schedule coordination for secure communication device deployment to clinical staff
- Change management assistance
- Cutover and go-live planning and facilitation
Project phases:
- Planning and discovery
- Technical and clinical communication workflow analysis
- Pilot device deployment and implementation
- Iterative cycle of device deployment and implementation
Primary areas of clinical focus:
- Bidirectional HIPAA compliant clinical communications – both phone calls and messaging
- Nurse call system integration
- Emergency wall alarms, e.g., code and staff assist
- Physiological alarm integration, e.g., cardiac monitoring, ventilators
- Mobile flowsheet documentation
- Mobile directory
In addition, the rollout enabled the following clinical functions:
- Bar code med administration
- Ability to upload clinical photos to the patient chart
- Mobile access to clinical resources
- Access to scheduling
Outcomes
Clinical Adoption of Unified Clinical Communications:
- Physicians 67%
- Nurses 77%
Pager Reliance:
As part of the UCC rollout, Michigan Medicine also replaced end of life phones and reduced their reliance on pagers as represented in the following study:
Manual Secure Chat vs. Paging Metrics
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