With electronic medical records (EMRs) quickly becoming the norm, more healthcare organizations are using secure messaging systems to help the expansion into Health Information Exchanges (HIEs). However, it is important for providers to maintain patient security, even when doctors or nurses are communicating directly with one another.
That was why when the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP) decided it was time to make a change, that they knew a strong secure messaging system was the way to go.
HUP launched a secure messaging pilot program in May 2013 and are using the Cureatr application. Physicians, pharmacists, social workers and discharge planning nurses were provided with iPhones or iTouches in four of the hospital’s departments. When shifts change, the phone are passed on.
Dr. C. William Hanson, chief medical information officer for HUP, as well as a professor of anesthesiology and surgical critical care, discussed the transition with HealthITSecurity.com and said that the move has had numerous unseen benefits.
“We were looking at provider-to-provider communication, but we found spontaneous themes forming up around patient care management,” Hanson said.
For example, after a patient leaves the operating room, a broadcast message can now be sent to the entire team of caregivers. Moreover, a list of what needs to be done can be sent to providers involved with each stage of recovery, Hanson explained.
“We were finding that people like pharmacists and transporters were seeing a benefit in being part of that exchange,” he said. “We could tighten up the timeline between a patient being ready for discharge or even answer a question about a drug issue.”
HUP went to the secure messaging solution primarily as a HIPAA-protected encrypted solution, Hanson said. It was necessary for communications and to look at the effects on the efficiency of those communications.
Not only is the data being communicated across the devices encrypted, but there is also a Mobile Device Management (MDM) application, Hanson explained. That way, if a phone is lost or stolen, it can be completely wiped of all information – specifically, patient data.
In addition to the secure messaging system, HUP employees have also been using a mobile application called Connexus, which lets providers pull up patient data on their smartphones.
“It’s a very efficient way of interacting with the various electronic systems in the hospital in a small package that’s carried by pretty much all of our providers at this point,” Hanson said.
Connexus is especially helpful as medicine increasingly has more handoffs. For example, residents are typically being restricted to shorter work days and coverage teams have to cycle through more often, Hanson explained. Having an electronic version of providers’ notes and access to the facility’s EMRs was “a desirable direction to go.”
Along similar lines as the secure messaging tool, having an app that provides access to EMRs and patient records makes perfectly good sense, Hanson said. Moreover, it is also proving to be beneficial in ways that were not originally expected.
For example, if a doctor is in the operating room, and an unscheduled patient arrives at the Intensive Care Unit, the doctor needs to digest all of the patient’s information in order to take care of them properly. The application is “designed to take a lot of stories and weave them into an easily digested package,” Hanson said.
Additionally, HUP has seen that more home care nurses also want access to the same information to better care for their patients, Hanson explained.
“It was a tool that was designed for one purpose that turns out to be suited to a number of different roles,” he said.
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