Let’s face it. Health care is something people have to avail themselves of even though they’d prefer not to. But if you provide a good experience and put the technology in place to improve the experience, people will come back and that’s a direct impact on your bottom line. In this era of accountable care and shrinking dollars from traditional sources like Medicare, hospitals should think more like hoteliers than healthcare providers.
Would improving communication and access to information make your hospital more safe, secure and comfortable/convenient for patients? Why not take advantage of technology for converging voice, data and wireless networks; mobility, awareness of threats as well as opportunities, and self-service? What about integrating systems and automating processes to save time, decrease alarm fatigue and improve patient care? There’s a framework for producing these outcomes, and it’s called situational awareness.
Originally a military term referring to a pilot’s operational status and knowledge of immediate threats, situational awareness today refers to real-time information about what’s happening in and around a facility, from a single building to multi-building campus. Besides emergency alerting, situational awareness also applies to business operations. It’s all about turning the inefficient – alarms – into the efficient – detailed alerts delivered to the right people on the right devices so they can deal with an unfolding situation in the right way.
