More Than Half of Hospital Emergency
Departments Report That 10 Percent or More of Hand Offs Have
Errors
Everbridge, Inc. (NASDAQ:EVBG), a global software company that
provides critical communications and enterprise safety applications
to help keep people safe and businesses running, today announced
the findings of its research into the communications challenges
that emergency room employees face every day in our nation’s
hospitals and medical facilities. Entitled “Care Communication Gaps
in U.S. Hospital Emergency Departments,” the report polled 158
emergency department employees about the communication challenges
that arise when coordinating patient care from one
doctor/nurse/practitioner to another – and what technologies are
most effective at accurately sharing patient care instructions. The
results of the research will be highlighted at the HIMSS 2017
healthcare IT conference, taking place from February 19-23, 2017,
in Orlando, FL.
A majority of emergency room employees reported that more than
10 percent of patient care hand offs contain communication errors –
errors that could endanger patient care outcomes; 22 percent
reported that more than 1 in 5 hand offs involve errors. Hand offs
occur more often in emergency rooms because the care teams needed
to treat patients are larger than for the rest of the hospital. For
example, in order to manage a stroke patient, an average care team
might involve 12-15 doctors, nurses and staff members spread out
inside and potentially outside the hospital. With 59 percent of
emergency departments reporting more hand offs to other care team
members than for treatments originating elsewhere in the hospital,
it is easy to see how these errors could happen.
Emergency room staff also reported which types of communication
they found the most effective – and which types were the least
effective. Real-time, face-to-face communication was the most used
and the most effective, as it is the one method of communication
where both parties can be sure the information was delivered and
received correctly. However, with distributed teams and physicians
often not onsite, the ability to have a face-to-face conversation
is often not possible, forcing staff to find other ways to hand off
patient care information and responsibilities. 94 percent of
respondents still use landline phones to share information – but
those were only considered effective if the caller avoided
voicemail and spoke with a colleague live; 30 percent rated
voicemail as the least effective form of communication.
The research also indicated that there may be a light at the end
of the tunnel: the use of mobile technologies, especially the
staff’s own devices, is growing, with 76 percent of physicians and
45 percent of clinical staff able to use personal devices. Despite
not cracking the top three most used communication methods, secure
text messaging (by 80 percent of respondents) and mobile phone (by
79 percent) were considered the next two most effective forms of
communication behind face-to-face discussions.
“Emergency department staff have much more important things to
think about than what the best communication method would be to
contact a specific doctor, nurse or practitioner,” stated Eric
Chetwynd, GM, Healthcare Solutions, Everbridge. “There should never
be any worries about whether patient care instructions were
correctly received and understood. With the growing acceptance of
mobile technologies in emergency departments, there is an excellent
opportunity to make co-worker communications more efficient and
effective – reducing the potential for errors that could affect
patient care.”
Additional key findings include:
Emergency Room Teams are Large – and Patient Care is Handed
Off More Often
- A majority of respondents (61 percent)
reported their emergency departments have more staff than other
parts of the hospital or facility.
- More than half (59 percent) shared that
there are more patient care hand offs in the emergency department
than in other areas of the hospital. A patient care hand off is
when an attending doctor/nurse/practitioner has to update another
doctor/nurse/practitioner in the facility about a current patient’s
care or recommended care. This can happen for many reasons,
including the patient being referred to a specialist, or coming out
of critical care, or because a shift is ending.
Communication Errors Happen During Hand Offs, Endangering
Patient Care
- A majority of emergency room employees
felt that more than 10 percent of patient care hand offs contain
errors.
- In fact, 22 percent felt that some
21-45 percent of patient care hand offs included errors that could
be traced back to communication failures.
- With so many different communication
methods needing to be juggled by emergency department employees, it
is easy to see where inefficiencies could affect patient care.
Patient Care Communication During Care Team Hand Offs Have
Multiple Challenges
- Waiting for physicians to respond to
hand off requests was the most cited challenge (23 percent - 32
percent report waiting for a physician or specialist). This was
followed by difficulties deciphering handwritten information (28
percent), incomplete information (21 percent), or delays receiving
information like test results (19 percent).
- Currently, the most used methods of
communication by emergency department staff are face-to-face
discussions (94 percent), landline telephones (94 percent) and
electronic medical records (EMR)/electronic health records (EHR)
(87 percent).
- There is no “best” way to contact
colleagues that is considered efficient and effective. A whopping
89 percent of emergency room staff are forced to use 5 or more
different channels to communicate with co-workers about
patients.
Some Channels are More Effective than Others
- Emergency department staff felt that
the most effective forms of communicating with co-workers about
patient care were real-time communications, including face-to-face
discussions (82 percent), secure text messaging (80 percent) and
mobile phone conversations (79 percent).
- The least effective forms of
communication were delayed methods, including voicemail (30 percent
rated it poor), pagers (29 percent) and faxes (24 percent).
- While landline telephones remained a
popular form of communicating with co-workers, they were only
considered effective if you avoided voicemail and spoke with a
colleague live.
Personal Mobile Technology Use is Growing Among Emergency
Departments
- 75 percent of emergency department care
teams are using mobile phones, while 49 percent use secure
messaging that enables mobile real-time communications for care
coordination.
- An increasing amount of emergency
department staff are being allowed to use personal mobile devices
to communicate with co-workers in the workplace. 76 percent of
physicians and 45 percent of clinical staff can use them in the
emergency department.
Given the outdated and inefficient communication technologies
that many emergency department staff still deal with daily, the
promise of using personal devices to communicate and improve
patient care hand offs is great. In fact, 76 percent felt personal
mobile devices would have a positive impact on patient care.
Emergency departments that participated in the research included
academic medical centers, private, non-profit hospitals, publicly
owned hospitals and for-profit systems. For more information on the
“Care Communication Gaps in U.S. Hospital Emergency Departments”
survey, or to see the full report, please click here. Everbridge
will also be highlighting the results and discussing the findings
of the survey at HIMSS 2017 in booth #5445.
About Everbridge
Everbridge, Inc. (NASDAQ:EVBG) is a global software company that
provides critical communications and enterprise safety applications
that enable customers to automate and accelerate the process of
keeping people safe and businesses running during critical events.
During public safety threats such as active shooter situations,
terrorist attacks or severe weather conditions, as well as critical
business events such as IT outages or cyber incidents, over 3,000
global customers rely on the company’s SaaS-based platform to
quickly and reliably construct and deliver contextual notifications
to millions of people at one time. The company’s platform sent over
1.5 billion messages in 2016, and offers the ability to reach more
than 200 countries and territories with secure delivery to over 100
different communication devices. The company’s critical
communications and enterprise safety applications, which include
Mass Notification, Incident Management, IT Alerting, Safety
Connection™, Community Engagement™, Secure Messaging and Internet
of Things, are easy-to-use and deploy, secure, highly scalable and
reliable. Everbridge serves over 800 hospitals, 8 of the 10 largest
U.S. cities, 8 of the 10 largest U.S.-based investment banks, all
four of the largest global accounting firms, 24 of the 25 busiest
North American airports and 6 of the 10 largest global automakers.
Everbridge is based in Boston and Los Angeles with additional
offices in San Francisco, Beijing and London. For more information,
visit www.everbridge.com, read the company blog, and follow
on Twitter and Facebook.
Cautionary Language Concerning Forward-Looking
Statements
This press release contains "forward-looking statements" within
the meaning of the “safe harbor” provisions of the Private
Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including but not limited
to, statements regarding the anticipated opportunity and trends for
growth in our critical communications and enterprise safety
applications and our overall business, our market opportunity, our
expectations regarding sales of our products, and our goal to
maintain market leadership and extend the markets in which we
compete for customers. These forward-looking statements are made as
of the date of this press release and were based on current
expectations, estimates, forecasts and projections as well as the
beliefs and assumptions of management. Words such as "expect,"
"anticipate," "should," "believe," "target," "project," "goals,"
"estimate," "potential," "predict," "may," "will," "could,"
"intend," variations of these terms or the negative of these terms
and similar expressions are intended to identify these
forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are subject
to a number of risks and uncertainties, many of which involve
factors or circumstances that are beyond our control. Our actual
results could differ materially from those stated or implied in
forward-looking statements due to a number of factors, including
but not limited to: our ability to attract new customers and retain
and increase sales to existing customers; our ability to increase
sales of our Mass Notification application and/or ability to
increase sales of our other applications; developments in the
market for targeted and contextually relevant critical
communications or the associated regulatory environment; our
estimates of market opportunity and forecasts of market growth may
prove to be inaccurate; we have not been profitable on a consistent
basis historically and may not achieve or maintain profitability in
the future; the lengthy and unpredictable sales cycles for new
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risks detailed in our risk factors discussed in filings with the
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including but not
limited to our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended
September 30, 2016 filed with the SEC on November 14, 2016. The
forward-looking statements included in this press release represent
our views as of the date of this press release. We undertake no
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statements, whether as a result of new information, future events
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upon as representing our views as of any date subsequent to the
date of this press release.
All Everbridge products are trademarks of Everbridge, Inc. in
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mentioned are the property of their respective owners.
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version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170213005301/en/
fama PR for EverbridgeJeff Drew,
617-986-5004everbridge@famapr.comorEverbridgeJeff Benanto,
781-373-9879jeff.benanto@everbridge.com
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