Reduce Time to Treatment with Care Team Alerts

When a patient’s condition quickly deteriorates, activating a rapid response team is crucial for providing timely interventions to prevent further decline.

Technology can play a critical role by facilitating efficient, well-coordinated responses in critical situations where strokes, heart attacks, code blues, and other major traumas have occurred.

If you’re looking for ways to upgrade your care team alerts, we’ve outlined real use cases implemented by some of our health system partners.

Regional Telestroke Alerts Improve Stroke Care Delivery

Overview: Regional telestroke alerts have mitigated call center and transfer center delays and have accelerated stroke care delivery from one central hub to 20-plus neighboring hospitals.

A Pennsylvania-based health system acts as a hub for stroke care for 20 hospitals in the surrounding area. They had a workflow in place for acute stroke care: Providers at these neighboring hospitals would call the health system’s transfer center to report a stroke, and the transfer center would then alert the on-call provider and send them to the requesting location. Because this system was using PerfectServe’s Clinical Collaboration solution, the transfer center would consult the PerfectServe application to look for the correct on-call provider to send out.

During the pandemic, this process saw extended delays due to lower-than-usual staff numbers and longer hold times. Because PerfectServe was deeply integrated into the organization’s clinical communication workflows, leaders at the organization wanted to see how the system’s care team alert functionality might boost stroke care delivery workflows, too.

Today, when stroke care is needed, a provider at a neighboring hospital can simply type “telestroke” in the PerfectServe app to initiate an alert. This automatically connects the requesting provider, the on-call provider, and an agent from the transfer center in one group message that includes the patient’s information, meaning there is no more delay from calling the transfer center, waiting for information, and then being connected to the on-call provider. The message tracks when each person sees the request, so over time, the health system can track response times and determine areas for improvement. 

Before PerfectServe, it was difficult to track how long it took for requesting providers to get in contact with the stroke specialists. The variability in connection times frustrated spoke sites and telestroke physicians. The organization wanted referring physicians to be able to place a request into the call center and connect with the on-call physician in less than five minutes, but this was only happening about 25% of the time. With PerfectServe, the requesting provider is connected to the on-call physician in less than five minutes more than 97% of the time.

Along with other benefits like detailed reports and more transparent communication, the telestroke care team alert has drastically reduced the time it takes to administer care to stroke patients. Not every hospital has the resources to evaluate these patients on site, so this isn’t just a win for the health system—it’s a win for the whole community.

Trauma Alerts Streamline Care Communication, Reduce Alarm Fatigue

Overview: Trauma alerts have streamlined emergency alerts to only necessary on-call providers, reducing alarm fatigue for other providers and enhancing care communication workflows.

A Pittsburgh-based healthcare organization used to have an exhaustive list of every pager and cell phone that had to be contacted when a trauma patient was inbound. The list didn’t discriminate—even if the device was attached to someone who didn’t need to respond, they were contacted. To put it mildly, this approach cast far too broad of a net. Providers who weren’t working or on call would receive these trauma alerts, meaning their days off would not infrequently get interrupted by communications that weren’t relevant to them. Put another way, it contributed to alarm fatigue across the care team.

With PerfectServe, the health system can send the trauma alert to only working and on-call providers when it’s initiated. PerfectServe automatically pulls the schedule from the health system’s scheduling solution, ensuring that the alert only goes to the appropriate care team members’ cellular devices. They no longer have to keep a laundry list of device numbers and contact information—it’s coordinated automatically to the device registered with the provider on call.

The process of organizing and targeting trauma alerts was also a catalyst for exploring other care team alerts. The health system has expanded the same on-call logic used for trauma alerts to a STAT OR team alert, meaning PerfectServe streamlines the process of getting an operating room prepped for an incoming trauma patient. Previously, the health system had to call the OR multiple times with updates to give them an idea of when a trauma patient would actually hit the OR. Today, the STAT OR alert automatically notifies all working OR and anesthesia staff when a patient is coming, which helps to expedite the entire process and eliminates back-and-forth communication.

The success of the STAT OR alert has prompted the organization to look at implementing other care team alerts (e.g., STAT radiology) in the near future.

Care Team Alerts Reduce Cardiac Response Times Across Multi-Campus Enterprise

Overview: Cardiac emergency alerts have dropped care delivery time for cardiac emergency patients across a multi-site health system.

A large health system in Michigan implemented PerfectServe to improve on-call cardiac response times across its multiple campuses. The system was a leader in stroke and cardiothoracic specialty care and wanted to reduce its “door-to-balloon” time—the time it takes for a heart attack patient to receive care once they arrive at the hospital.

The cath lab team had a workflow in place for notifying on-call team members when a heart attack patient arrived at the hospital, but this was an outdated pager-based workflow activated by an internal contact center system. This meant operators had to reference an on-call schedule to call the correct physician, and physicians were often put on hold while the call center got more information about the patient, which delayed care delivery. This was complicated by the fact that operators were juggling responsibilities for multiple locations, each of which had its own on-call schedule. The process did work and care delivery times did meet organizational goals, but system leaders wanted a better workflow in place that was easier on providers and enhanced care delivery as a whole.

The system turned to PerfectServe and opted to implement the care team alerts module. Any member of the incoming patient’s care team can now initiate the alert using the PerfectServe application. This immediately alerts all on-call cath lab providers on their mobile devices of the event, allowing them to check details, respond, and make their way to the hospital without having to call the contact center or wait for more information. The notification also alerts ancillary members of the patient’s care team to ensure all interested parties are up-to-date on the patient’s status. For this health system, the integration of PerfectServe’s care team alerts has transformed communication efficiency while improving patient care.

Critical Moments Call for Efficient Communication 

Care team alerts have become invaluable tools for PerfectServe’s health system partners, enabling rapid, efficient, and accurate communication during the most critical situations. By ensuring the right care team members are promptly alerted, this functionality not only enhances patient care but also helps to reduce alert fatigue by making communication more targeted and far less intrusive. And better yet, thanks to our extensive experience working with customers on a variety of projects, our team can customize an alert to fit just about any situation.

To learn more about how care team alerts can streamline communication in some of the most critical moments, contact us today.