How Voice Solutions Improve Healthcare Staff Productivity

It’s no secret that seamless communication is at the heart of efficient medical organizations. To deliver the highest possible standard of care in a high-pressure environment, healthcare staff need to be able to think on their feet and exchange critical information quickly.

Highly efficient clinical facilities rely on communications platforms developed specifically for healthcare, with voice solutions advantages like integrated virtual phone systems, audio conferencing, and contact center capabilities. These tools allow real-time contact between hospital staff, even at different medical locations, for critical in-the-moment communications.

Effective communication leads to more vital teamwork and improved healthcare staff productivity for medical organizations in emergencies. This leads to elevated employee experiences, greater patient satisfaction, and better clinical outcomes.

How to Measure Productivity in Healthcare

Measuring staff productivity is essential to understanding the effectiveness of a healthcare practice, especially when it comes to maintaining high-quality patient care. Several key metrics exist in the complex medical environment for evaluating employee output and improving the patient experience.

Set and evaluate KPIs. The first step for assessing employee productivity is identifying the organization’s key performance indicators. This can be regarding the number of patients seen, the time spent with each patient, staff-to-patient ratios, or any other metric relevant to specific productivity goals.

Track patient satisfaction and retention. Patient feedback is an invaluable resource for healthcare providers in determining the effectiveness of their care and how patients feel about their caregivers. Surveys and feedback forms provide insights into the patient experience, while retention rates are a quantitative measure of patient satisfaction.

Monitor visit length and wait times. Another quantitative way to measure staff productivity is by distributing time spent with patients. If visits are relatively quick but wait times are longer than expected, it can indicate poor productivity. On the other hand, shorter, more time-effective visits coupled with minimal wait times can illustrate operational efficiency.

Review budgets. The bottom line is essential for any organization but is especially critical in the often-underfunded healthcare system. Evaluate budgets for signs of excess spending, such as extra billable hours around repetitive tasks like paperwork and reporting, which could indicate underperformance or room for improvement in staff productivity.

4 Tips for Maximizing Staff Productivity with Voice Communications Tools

There are significant benefits to implementing robust voice communications solutions in a healthcare setting. Ensuring a steady and reliable exchange of information can dramatically improve workflow and increase productivity.

Consider following these tips to improve voice communications in your organization to maximize staff efficiency and ensure optimal patient outcomes.

1. Use integrated communications tools for easy access to important information.

Medical practitioners often locate contact information, patient records, or other vital documents. A unified communications platform with a readily available centralized cloud or on-site network provides seamless connectivity for rapid access to critical data.

A communications system with API capabilities can integrate with a care center’s customer relationship management software. Using this interface, a caregiver can easily click to call a patient to go over symptoms with their records and medical history at their fingertips.

2. Leverage voice systems for stronger teamwork and collaboration.

Real-time voice connections support the delivery of clear and accurate emergency instructions for life-saving efficiency. Other texts or in-person conversations are often impractical or impossible, and talking is the best option. Effective healthcare communications solutions ensure timely, reliable connections between colleagues in crucial situations.

In the case of a critical hospital event, doctors and nurses need to be able to quickly pick up a phone to reach their team and plan a course of action. Discussing treatments and sharing documents can be pivotal for successful patient outcomes.

3. Provide better patient care with communications solutions.

Too often, medical tech stacks are complicated and require time and training to use efficiently. Effective voice solutions are user-friendly and take the stress out of communications so medical staff can focus on what they do best: look after the people in their care.

When an emergency occurs, responders need to be focused on their patients rather than trying to figure out how to access contact information for the correct doctor or look up patient records in different systems. A unified platform stores all this information in one easy-to-use interface for maximum efficiency.

4. Improve security and compliance for patients and providers.

As healthcare communications tools become more sophisticated, security concerns become more critical. Essential hospital IT systems must remain online and can’t be vulnerable to attacks from hackers or malware. Secure messaging and calling are central to maintaining patient privacy.

Modern voice solutions comply with regulatory standards and protect sensitive patient data with encryption and firewalls. High-quality healthcare communications preserve patient privacy by adhering to security, privacy, and anti-fraud measures like PCI DSS, GDPR, HIPAA, and call recording regulations.

A Voice Communications Solution on the Front Lines

When the Blanchard Valley Health System (BVHS) switched to Mitel’s MiVoice Business platform, their initial goals were to simplify communications and reduce costs. But when COVID-19 struck, the scalability and reliability of the system supported their staff and patients through the crisis.

As the workforce went remote, call center demands grew, and emergency facilities were added to the network, BVHS could quickly expand its communications system with minimal disruption. Even with phones in tents at outdoor testing sites, the network had 99% uptime.

The system’s flexibility meant that front-line workers and emergency medical staff could call each other without fail to discuss developments about the pandemic. Even now that BVHS operations have returned to a new standard, voice solutions remain a central part of their care process.

Optimize Healthcare Staff Productivity with Mitel

Mitel offers a variety of unified communications and collaboration solutions tailor-made for healthcare organizations of all sizes. Mitel provides the foundation for successful outcomes from small clinics to large-scale medical systems with voice, video, chat, messaging, and team collaboration tools.

Industry-leading hardware and software enhance healthcare employee productivity by creating reliable and secure connections. Team members can easily collaborate to share ideas and documents regarding patient care to improve outcomes and satisfaction.

Remote working solutions like softphones, apps, and virtual dashboards mean that even off-site staff can provide critical, omnichannel support anywhere.

As a global market leader in business communications, Mitel specializes in providing the best collaboration systems for medical professionals. Our modern, intuitive technology is specifically built around the need for efficiency and time sensitivity in high-stakes environments.

Learn how Mitel’s voice solutions can improve your healthcare organization’s workflow, productivity, and employee satisfaction. Contact an expert representative today to bring new life to your unified communications and collaboration systems.