Ninety-five Percent of Hospitals Believe Clinical Communication is Inefficient during Patient Discharge Planning, According to New Imprivata Report

Research by Spyglass Consulting Group underscores communication challenges hospitals face in high-value, complex clinical workflows

Lexington, Mass. – June 6, 2017—Ninety-five percent of hospitals surveyed expressed concerns about communication inefficiencies during the patient discharge process, according to a new report issued by Imprivata®, the healthcare IT security company, in collaboration with the Spyglass Consulting Group, a market strategy firm focused on the mobile technologies and digital health.

The report, titled “High-value, complex clinical workflows require enhanced communications capabilities,” looks at specific patient discharge and care coordination workflows where some hospitals have communication inefficiencies and challenges. It also supports how an enterprise-class, secure communications platform combined with process improvements can address these inherent communications issues.

“For care providers, every second counts and being able to communicate efficiently can make a huge difference in the successful treatment of a patient,” said Dr. Sean Kelly, Chief Medical Officer at Imprivata. “The respondents to this survey reiterate an unfortunate truth -- some care settings are burdened with outdated, inefficient communications technologies and processes that not only slow down care providers, but also jeopardize the safety of patients. We simply can’t have this in healthcare, which is why we’ve designed Imprivata Cortext to meet the specific workflow and communication challenges in the industry, all while ensuring HIPAA compliance and the security of patient information.”

Key findings from the report include:

  • Coordinating external resources: Eighty-five percent of hospitals surveyed expressed concerns about the communication challenges with coordinating external community-based resources required to support patients, family members, and caregivers post discharge.
  • Reconciling patient medications: Forty-five percent of hospitals surveyed expressed concerns about the communication and coordination complexities required to accurately identify and resolve potential conflicts for all patient medications prescribed or taken before, during, and after hospitalization.
  • Collaborating with care team members: Eighty percent of hospitals surveyed expressed concerns about the difficulties communicating and collaborating with members of multi-disciplinary teams.
  • Transitioning to another medical service: Sixty-five percent of hospitals surveyed expressed concerns about the communication and coordination complexities involved with efficiently and safely transitioning patients from one medical service to another.
  • Coordinating with ancillary departments: Fifty percent of hospitals surveyed expressed concerns about difficulties in communicating with ancillary departments for patient procedures and tests, and then coordinating their transfers.

“Communicating inside and outside the hospital walls is difficult and the findings of our survey illustrate this problem and speak to C-level hospital executives who are involved in clinical sponsorship, technical evaluation, and business decision making,” said Gregg Malkary, Managing Director, Spyglass Consulting Group. “We hope this report will promote real action from healthcare leadership to employ communication solutions that enable care teams to provide the right patient data, to the right team member, at the right time.”  

Imprivata Cortext® is the secure communications platform that enables healthcare organizations to improve care coordination, inside and outside the hospital. More specifically, Imprivata Cortext allows healthcare delivery organizations to:

  • Replace pagers and improve provider productivity with a secure messaging platform that enables communication across any desktop, tablet or mobile device
  • Easily coordinate care across employed and affiliated providers, and across multiple healthcare organizations, reducing readmissions and maximizing reimbursements
  • Improve patient safety and satisfaction with more time by patients’ bedsides, enabled by easy, real-time access to patient information

Imprivata will host a Webinar to provide more details on the findings of the report on June 21, 2017. Details and sign-up information can be found here.

About Imprivata

Imprivata®, the healthcare IT security company, provides healthcare organizations globally with a security and identity platform that delivers authentication management, fast access to patient information, secure communications, and positive patient identification. Imprivata enables care providers to securely and efficiently access, communicate, and transact patient health information to address critical compliance and security challenges while improving productivity and the patient experience. For more information, please visit www.imprivata.com.

About Spyglass Consulting Group

Spyglass Consulting Group is a leading market intelligence and strategy firm focused exclusively on the healthcare industry. Based in Menlo Park, CA, the firm provides thought leadership, market coverage, and insights for the most transformative sectors of healthcare IT including point of care computing/communications, patient engagement, healthcare analytics and remote patient monitoring. Spyglass clients include more than 200 leading technology companies, management consulting firms, healthcare provider organizations, and the investment community.

Media Contacts:

Claire Monaghan, Imprivata
617.315.1001
cmonaghan@wcgworld.com

Gregg Malkary, Spyglass Consulting Group
650.575.9682
gmalkary@spyglass-consulting.com