Connected Patients – Enabling World-Class HealthcareBetter for patients. Better for you.

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Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Sometimes, the brave new world of managed healthcare feels like that, doesn’t it?

Hospitals and providers are being pushed simultaneously toward mutually exclusive ends. On one hand, payers, regulators, and patients expect you to provide a pleasant, patient-centric “user experience” and positive treatment outcomes. On the other, you’re expected to not just contain, but aggressively cut costs, reduce lengths of stay, and meet a plethora of KPI metrics. It feels like being caught between fiscal austerity on the supply side, skilled caregiver shortages in the center, and a well-informed patient population on the demand side ready to tweet or post at the first wrong meal order. Capping it all is the financial and reputational success of your hospital. And, perhaps, your job.

It’s a complex set of challenges, and no single approach can fully address it and lead you to comprehensive success. But there are meaningful, manageable steps you can take that impact significant parts of that challenge to deliver positive, welcomed outcomes.

The connected patient

What if – with relative simplicity and without major operational or IT restructuring – you could successfully address these competing objectives of better care delivery, more thorough, current, and auditable records, and lower costs? All while providing a safer, more secure physical environment?

The Connected Patient is a concept developed by Unify to bring the patient, his or her care and its documentation, and caregivers closer. This is mutual immediate full disclosure – everything everyone needs to know the moment it’s needed. For inpatient and outpatient situations, from patient referral, through the course of care, through discharge and follow up, each member of the care team is aware of those aspects of the patient’s status, in real time, which pertain to them. For home care, both patients and administrators always know whether appointments are running on time or falling behind. Patients are educated about their condition and treatment plan and can even be reminded to take their medication, and to track whether it’s been taken. Care providers know, with a glance at their smart device, who on their team is available for consultation, and instantly connect with them and with off-site experts.

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More than an idea

The tools to make this scenario a reality for your healthcare operation are in use around the world and available to you now. Unify – formerly Siemens Enterprise Communications – has developed them, a combination of enterprise-grade general-use communications solutions modified for healthcare settings and specialty solutions specifically for healthcare.

Unified communications (UC) is at the heart of this new way to work. As the name implies, UC unifies previously disparate communications tools into a single, seamless user experience: voice, audio, and video conferencing, online collaboration, messaging, and contact center. Presence to show availability of others on your team. One Number Service, so calls follow you on the device of your choice. All in a single, elegant user experience, equally available at the desktop or mobile device.

Bedside terminals provide a point-of-care workflow solution which integrates the power of UC (for both patient and care giver) with electronic medical records (EMR), electronic meal ordering (EMO), patient education, and infotainment.

Sophisticated, flexible alarm and alert solutions respond to an array of automated and manual input to provide notice of schedule interruptions, disasters, major incidents, security notifications, and more. This alarm response system can work in conjunction with high-volume dispatch systems to instantly pull together large and diverse on- and off-network teams, including administrators, clinicians, first responders, and government officials.

While Unify provides these capabilities as fully-integrated turn-key solutions, we have also developed them as component-level solutions, to overlay and work with existing infrastructure.

Lastly, we provide the services to design, implement, manage, and maintain these solutions as well as those from other vendors.

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The patient experience – a more hospitable hospital

Patients have become a rather demanding lot, haven’t they? And why not? So have we all. It’s the nature of our connected world.

We have instantly at our fingertips what was a short while ago unimaginably vast amounts of information about virtually anything – including what new services other providers are leveraging to lure customer-patients. How they feel about their stay with you gets transmitted, fast and far, to a social audience hungry to know, and to share. And it’s not just your customer-patients; regulators and payers are measuring and reimbursing you on an array of metrics, including patient satisfaction. Control is migrating out from providers to all these, with the consumer increasingly trying to call the tune.

So, why not make the patient stay more like another away-from-home experience? Why not take a cue from hospitality?

Hotels know when a guest is scheduled to arrive. Guests can check in online and be sent their room number and a virtual key by text message. At higher end hotels, they’re greeted by name and given directions to their room. Once in the room, guests have access to the internet and entertainment, they can prepare for the next day’s meetings, order room service and request a turn-down. When ready to leave, they can check out and even take an exit survey through the television.

Why not do the same for their hospital visit?

Informative welcomingYour first salvo into creating a more hospitality-oriented customer experience can start the moment a patient enters your facility. By integrating Unify’s mobile client and alarm response solution, you can push scheduling reminders to patients at a predetermined time or intervals and give them the opportunity to accept, decline, or modify an appointment. When appointments run behind, you can send out a courtesy notification and, if the delay crosses a time threshold, even offer a suggestion to enjoy a few moments at a nearby coffee shop rather than your waiting room.

Further, you can enable patients’ smart devices’ real-time locating system (RLTS) capabilities (for instance, via automated self-registration) to simultaneously announce to appropriate staff their arrival on premises while pushing arrival instructions to your patient-customer. Imagine the reaction to being greeted by name when approaching the registration desk. This is expectation-transcending, hospitality-grade customer treatment.

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Engaged participantsOnce at the bedside, the connected patient is truly connected. You can provide access to the internet, movies, and other infotainment options. Studies show patients provided these capabilities – particularly more senior patients – report significantly higher satisfaction levels with their stay1. From their bed, they can order meals tailored to their tastes and specific dietary conditions, aided by pictures that provide a clearer idea of what will be delivered, and they can do so closer to mealtime than is possible with paper systems. This reduces meal waste, enhances patient health through more complete nutrition intake, and enables shorter patient stays.

To help patients become more participatory in their treatment, these point-of-care terminals provide in-depth educational libraries so they can learn more about their condition and specific treatment recommendations. Your hospital can also provide dynamic surveys, tailored by condition or ward to be more relevant to both the patient and the hospital, and available for instant analysis or review by stakeholders. Research has shown that patients are more likely to participate in electronic surveys which appear more pertinent, and which can be completed rapidly. By observing and engaging in more detailed, personalized patient care discussions at the bedside, research suggests that patients feel more positive about their experience.2

Keeping track of what’s importantBut these patient benefits aren’t limited to infotainment. We can help you show respect for your patient’s time – a welcomed turn for patients, without doubt. As a clinician makes his or her rounds, the bedside terminal logon/logout procedure can update “down-stream” patients’ terminals or smart phones to advise of the clinician’s ETA status. (This is accomplished by

integration with Unify’s alarm response system and the facility’s appointment system.)

The same approach can be used in home health or other off-site environments to let both patients and staff know when a home worker is running behind.

Taking these capabilities a step further, by integrating alarm response and Unify’s mobile UC client, alerts can be set to help patients track medication intake, including alerts when medication is missed, and requiring acknowledgement. Likewise, alerts can be set to remind patients of self-guided therapy treatment, or just simple appointments.

As it regards the patient, the goal in each of these endeavors is to provide best-practices care based on customer service principles rather than administrative process.

1 Luras, et al (2007). Long term care and Hospital LoS for elderly patients.2 Society of Hospital Medicine (U.S.), Mourad, M., et al (2011). Patient Satisfaction with a Hospitalist Procedure Service: Is Bedside Procedure Teaching Reassuring to Patients?

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The provider experience – more face time, less administration

For hospitals, clinicians and other care providers, the Connected Patient could not lead to more meaningful results: improved patient outcomes, reduced costs, reduced liability, and enhanced community standing.

So much time is currently lost to walking between nurse stations to retrieve incomplete information, or waiting for results. Attempts to reach colleagues for consultation are often unsuccessful because that colleague is engaged elsewhere, so messages are left in voice mail. A specialist is off-site, so on-duty staff delay a complex procedure for want of a consultation. Meanwhile, the clock moves forward.

We can help you recover time and effort to streamline processes to produce better, more effective patient care.

Collaborate nowUnified communications mean healthcare teams can collaborate – rapidly, completely, and on the first attempt. Through “presence”, care team members’ availability for a conference is visible on the user interface before a call attempt is made, providing the opportunity to reach out to alternate team members first. A single click instantly connects the team on whatever devices they’re using at the time, without needing to know the number or have them dial a conference bridge. Video-enabled Web collaboration helps them review and jointly update plan-of-care documents, or dynamically whiteboard a complex thought. Voice messages can be read as emails, and emails listened to as voice messages. And all of it mobile, so care happens wherever you are.

Ultimately, this means patients get treated faster, and staff has more time with patients.

Everything you need, where you need itPoint-of-care solutions – which can be integrated with UC – have two direct and profound implications for your care staff. First, through integrating with the hospital’s EMR system, team members can be assured that a patient’s full, current records are at the bedside. Lab results and imaging are available at the bedside the moment they’re released. If the patient is moved from one ward to another, the full record moves along with them, and everyone who needs to know, knows, from the pharmacy to the switchboard. Perhaps more significantly, though, clinicians and nurses are able to update records in real time while they’re fresh in mind, without the risk of small but crucial details being forgotten later. This could have a significantly positive impact on correct treatment, and on liability.

4 Luras, et al (2007). Long term care and Hospital LoS for elderly patients.

A hand on the pulse of patient satisfactionContact centers have been pressed into service for decades on behalf of better customer service – just about everywhere except healthcare. But as healthcare becomes more consumerized, with more competitive options available to discriminating patients, differentiating your offering becomes critical to growth. And contact centers provide providers with a host of options to enhance awareness with your patient-customers.

For patients, family members, and friends, callers can direct themselves quickly to scheduling, admissions, billing, follow up – without tying up scarce human resources on routine tasks. Intelligent routing makes sure detailed inquiries get to the right department, significantly improving the likelihood of resolution on the first attempt – a prime indicator of customer satisfaction.

Post care, outbound campaign capabilities can push surveys as well as automated medication and appointment reminders. The patient gets the information they’re looking for in a timely manner, liability risks are contained, and patient-customer satisfaction is enhanced.

To make sure you leverage these technology and human resources to the fullest extent, Unify provides sophisticated workforce optimization solutions to monitor and analyze performance and compliance. These help ensure your continually improve your patient engagement and increase productivity.

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Keeping ahead of schedules, getting the word outAs discussed with patient benefits, Unify’s integrated response solution helps providers stay ahead of missed or lagging appointments, while assisting patients in keeping up with medication and treatment regimens. And for emergency response / business continuity plans, combining alarm response with our high-volume dispatch solution means even extremely large and diverse stakeholder teams can be assembled instantly.

Lastly, these Connected Patient tools can be deployed as best suits your business model –on-premises, in the cloud, or as a hybrid. So we flex to you, rather than demanding you bend to us. And Unify can not only design, implement, and maintain all this, but manage it so you can keep your scarce and valuable IT staff on more mission-critical projects.

So, the connected patient results in better patient care faster, with greater team awareness, and reduced liability and costs.

Conclusion

The connected patient results in better patient care delivered faster, with more and auditable control, with greater team awareness, and yielding reduced liability and costs. It opens the door to an elusive but valuable new paradigm: everything everyone needs to know the moment it’s needed. Through Unify’s Connected Patient portfolio of unified communications, point-of-care, alarm response, dispatch, command and control, and contact center solutions, you can provide patients a more high-touch, personalized care experience while helping them engage more completely in that care and its follow up. Providers benefit from vastly enhanced, richer, and simpler collaboration, and more qualitative documentation.

The Connected Patient concept is real, with solutions deliverable today. Unify has worked with providers globally to deliver world-class healthcare solutions in over 15,000 implementations. As a recognized visionary and market leader by global experts such as Gartner3, Forrester4, and others, and with over fifty years’ experience in healthcare communications, you can be assured of partnering with someone who knows you, and understands your patients’ needs. Talk with your Unify representative to learn more.

It’s a new way to work.

Solution index

Unified communications – A software platform for unified, comprehensive communications applications, including voice, audio, and video conferencing, online collaboration, messaging, and contact center.

• OpenScape UC Application• OpenScape Voice• OpenScape 4000 (current customers)

Point-of-care bedside terminals – Interactive, multi-function bedside workstations for both patients and clinicians, providing infotainment, communications, and EMR/hospital systems integration.

• OpenScape Health Station (US and UK)5

• OpenScape Health Station (Rest of world)5

Alarm response – Mobile client-optimized server to simultaneously or sequentially alert and inform first responders via phone or text messaging in virtually any scenario.

• OpenScape Alarm Response

Dispatch / Command and control – Secure, extremely high-capacity, high-availability multi-line communications solution for dispatchers in time-critical, high pressure dispatch environments

• OpenScape Xpert

Contact center – Comprehensive scalable customer service solutions, including inbound contact center, interactive voice response (IVR), outbound / campaign management, and workforce optimization (WFO), for premise-based, private cloud, public cloud, and hybrid implementations.

• OpenScape Contact Center Suite

Learn more about The New Way to Work at http://www.unify.com/us/new-way-to-work.aspx

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3 2013 Gartner Critical Capabilities for Unified Communications.4 The Forrester Wave™: On-Premises Unified Communications And Collaboration, Q2 2014. 5 Specific Health Station solutions vary by country due to regulatory or compliance differences.

About Unify

Unify is one of the world’s leading communications software and services firms, providing integrated communications

solutions for approximately 75 percent of the Fortune Global 500. Our solutions unify multiple networks, devices and

applications into one easy-to-use platform that allows teams to engage in rich and meaningful conversations. The result

is a transformation of how the enterprise communicates and collaborates that amplifies collective effort, energizes

the business, and enhances business performance. Unify has a strong heritage of product reliability, innovation, open

standards and security.

unify.com

Copyright © Unify GmbH & Co. KG, August 2014 Hofmannstr. 51, D-81379 Munich, Germany All rights reserved. Reference No.: A31002-P3010-D101-2-7629

The information provided in this document contains merely general descriptions or characteristics of performance which in case of actual use do not always apply as described or which may change as a result of further development of the products. An obligation to provide the respective characteristics shall only exist if expressly agreed in the terms of contract. Availability and technical specifications are subject to change without notice.

Unify, OpenScape, OpenStage and HiPath are registered trademarks of Unify GmbH & Co. KG. All other company, brand, product and service names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.