Patient Communication Improvement Case Study

This case study outlines the communication challenges faced by the internal medicine department at a Boston hospital, which has a long-standing reputation for high-quality medical care. The hospital's paging system was found to be unreliable, often resulting in missed critical pages due to limited range and coverage gaps. Additionally, the existing paging system was not HIPAA-compliant, which hindered after-hours communication between physicians and patients. The previous workflow involved patients calling an answering service, which then paged the on-call physician. However, lost pages left patients without timely assistance. The implementation of OnPage's alert management system allowed the medical team to receive and respond to patient requests more reliably. The new workflow included the answering service sending OnPage messages that were routed to the appropriate physician based on the on-call schedule. This solution enhanced HIPAA compliance, improved response times, and ensured that critical messages were never missed, ultimately leading to better patient care.