Healthcare organizations have long struggled with the process of patient handoff and the necessary passing of critical information from one physician or care team to another. The Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare found that sub-standard hand-offs result in work inefficiencies and increased costs and was a leading cause in treatment delays, mistakes or adverse events.
Early attempts to improve patient hand-offs were both cumbersome and time consuming: data had to be synthesized and summarized from different sources and communicated with the receiver. There were often checklists and forms to complete. Even aided by technology, miscommunications and delays remained prevalent and critical information was often overlooked, particularly clinical notes.
In order to improve patient hand-offs, the Joint Commission outlines that hand-off communication be “timely, accurate, completely unambiguous and understood by the recipient.”
Telmediq’s Safe Handoff Feature
Telmediq has addressed this breakdown in handoff communication with a one-touch handoff procedure from any device (smartphone, laptop, tablet or PC):
- The outgoing physician selects a patient and, in one click, chooses who to hand off to. That handoff includes all patient information, including data from the EMR, lab results, clinical notes, pending or completed orders and threaded chats.
- The recipient physician must either accept or reject the patient. When accepted, the doctor has immediate access to the full patient file, including notes from physicians and nurses and the status of orders and tests.
- In the event of a delay, the outgoing patient hand-off will be escalated to another clinician based on the organization's pre-defined escalation policy for patient hand-offs.
If your hospital struggles with delays in patient hand-offs or orders, contact us to discuss how we can tie together your healthcare systems to create more efficient - and safe - patient care.
References:
- https://www.jointcommission.org/assets/1/6/tst_hoc_persp_08_12.pdf
- http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/746070_2