Amcom

Integrate. Automate. Communicate.

How well are you connected?

Take a few minutes to examine how connected your hospital is and how you can become better connected, if necessary. Understanding where your hospital stands with regards to connectivity is very important because it directly relates to patient safety, satisfaction and staff productivity.

Upon completion of this one-page evaluation tool, you will receive immediate feedback as to how your hospital scored and suggested action items that can increase hospital connectivity.

*First Name
*Last Name
*Email
*Title
*Phone
*Company
*City
*Country
*State/Province
Zip Code

*Required

Category One – Organization Information

1. Type of healthcare organization:
Hospital (general medical, surgical, psychiatric, substance abuse, specialty)
Nursing and residential care (nursing care, mental care, elderly care)
Ambulatory services (physician office, dentist, outpatient, laboratory, home health)

2. Location:

3. Approximate size of your healthcare facility:
Fewer than 100 beds
100-300 beds
301-500 beds
More than 500 beds

Category Two – Wireless Connectivity

4. Which types of wireless communication devices do you support? Check all that apply.
Long range pagers
On-site pagers
Wireless in-house phones (examples include Vocera, SpectraLink, Cisco, Polycom, Alcatel, Avaya, NEC, Nortel)
Smartphones (examples include iPhone, BlackBerry)
Land-to-mobile radios
Not sure/None

5. What percentage of clinical staff uses wireless communication devices (not including pagers)?
Less than 30%
30%-50%
More than 50%
Not sure/None

6. Which of the following staff in your hospital carry wireless devices? Check all that apply
Physicians
Nurses
Biomed personnel
Housekeeping
Maintenance
Security
IT
Not sure/None

7. Which of the following systems in your hospital send notifications or alerts directly to your clinical staff’s wireless communication devices? Check all that apply.
Nurse call
Patient monitoring
Pulse oximeters
Fire alarm
Building alarms
Bed management
Infant protection
Critical lab results
Ventilators
Infusion pumps
Other
None
Not sure

8. If you checked any of the systems in the previous question, which communication devices are receiving these text-based notifications or alerts?
Long range pagers
On-site pagers
Wireless in-house phones (examples include Vocera, SpectraLink, Cisco, Polycom, Alcatel, Avaya, NEC, Nortel)
Smartphones (examples include iPhone, BlackBerry)
Land-to-mobile radios
No systems are receiving notifications or alerts
Not sure

Category Three – Communication Efficiency

9. How much time could be saved each day by nurses if they had wireless devices that received notifications from clinical systems like nurse call and patient monitoring?
15 minutes
30 minutes
1 hour
More than 1 hour
Not sure

10. At your organization, how often would you say nurses are able to communicate immediately with other caregivers and decision makers, whether face-to-face or via mobile communications methods?
Always
Most of the time
Sometimes
Not often
Never
Not sure

11. At your organization, how often do you feel inefficient communications have a direct effect on patient care?
Very often
Sometimes
Not often
Never
Not sure

12. Which of the following best describes your situation?
Considering implementing a new type of wireless devices
Have wireless devices, but not receiving notifications from clinical systems
Have wireless devices and are receiving notifications from clinical systems, but messages are not prioritized before being sent to staff
Have wireless devices and are receiving notifications from clinical systems and all messages are prioritized
None of the above

Category Four – Communication Systems

13. At your organization, do personnel use speech recognition systems to automatically connect to others? These systems are part of the phone system and prompt users to say a name or department and then connect them without human intervention.
Yes
No
Not sure

14. At your organization, can you page/message by role? In other words, can you simply page the on-call cardiologist and rely on a system to contact the right person automatically?
Yes
No
Not sure

15. Is a Web-based directory available throughout your organization whereby staff can gain updated contact information for the right people?
Yes
No
Not sure

16. Is a Web-based directory available throughout your organization whereby authorized staff can update and look up on-call schedules?
Yes
No
Not sure

17. Can you send a page to a person and have it appear on his/her smartphone (iPhone, BlackBerry)?
Yes
No
Not sure

18. When you send pages/messages, are you able to provide a complete audit trail indicating when the message was sent, received, and read?
Yes
No
Not sure

19. Do staff members have a means to learn the best contact method for a given individual? In other words, are you able to look up how/and on which device Dr. Jones wants to be called during the day as well as during the evening?
Yes
No
Not sure

20. Do you provide presence/whereabouts information in a system about staff – knowing whether they are in or out of the hospital?
Yes
No
Not sure

White Paper:
Getting Hospital Call Center Software Projects Approved

White Paper:
Effective Web-based Communications In Hospitals

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