No Failure to Communicate: Clinical Communication Platforms 2020
In the current market, the term clinical communication seems to be thrown around a lot. There’s nothing too impenetrable about the words themselves, but there remains a lack of clarity around clinical communication platforms and what it means to adequately utilize them. KLAS’ recent report, Clinical Communication Platforms 2020—Advanced User Insights, seeks to address this issue and more clearly define the market.
There is tremendous value to be found in a solid clinical communications platform when an organization elevates its importance. This report is one of the most comprehensive and in-depth reports that KLAS has had the privilege of producing. The insights in this report come from advanced users as identified by the vendors themselves. Results for other organizations will likely vary depending on their level of buy-in. However, the insights should prove more than useful to those providers looking to crystalize the pieces of their clinical communication strategy and identify exact workflows that vendors have enabled, outcomes that can be achieved, and lessons that can be learned from advanced users.
Some Pointers on the Data Points
Because this market is still emerging, we at KLAS knew that a broad definition of clinical communications would result in a very broad spectrum of usage. That is why we zeroed in on the advanced users to see what could be accomplished and what outcomes have been achieved. We wanted to know the who, where, and how regarding the use of these platforms, and we got our answers.
This report features 10 specific jobs to be done and validates over 80 individual workflows that have been adopted by advanced users. Communication workflows around patient-centered care teams, clinical support staffs, advanced nurse workflows, and unified communications are among the most mature and most used by organizations. As the report shows, there is a lot of immediate value to be gained from those workflows. Across all the organizations in the report, the most common outcomes were those achieved in acute care.
Workflows like these have created more efficient and timely communication between the members of a patient’s care team, improved patient outcomes and satisfaction, created faster clinician response times, decreased the length of stay and patient wait times, prompted stronger usefulness and adoption of the platform, improved patient documentation, and reduced noise. The report covers more mature workflows, such as those mentioned above, as well as the more cutting-edge side that tends to focus outside of the hospital. All of these workflows have shown impressive outcomes for the users that adopted them, and that is especially crucial in today’s climate.
While the data for this report was already collected before other more specific COVID-19 workflows came to light, we can readily see the applications of clinical communication platforms featured in the report to our current situation. With the immense surge of telehealth usage and the need for isolating patients and care teams, more efficient communication workflows are more important than ever.
How Are the Players?
There are many vendors vying for attention in this space, and the report covers many of these in overviews and case studies in order to provide the best summation of what providers can hope to achieve by pushing the solutions to their limits. It is important to note that no vendor is doing everything. There are many challenges and workflows to address in clinical communications. However, one common thread we found among all of the advanced users was that they are all very pleased with the technology that the vendors have provided. We probably didn’t talk to a single advanced user that was frustrated. They are all thrilled to have the technology and see lots and lots of opportunities to improve upon what they are already doing down the road. Perhaps that attitude is simply in the DNA of advanced users.
Advanced Information for All
These advanced users are seeing strong outcomes, and the purpose of the Clinical Communication Platforms 2020—Advanced User Insights report is to show off those results and show prospective advanced users just where to go to adopt certain workflows and achieve certain outcomes. This report features a lot of in-depth information for providers to use to reach their ultimate goals. These platforms are being utilized to consolidate and replace other technologies throughout these organizations, and it’s KLAS’ goal to share the strategies that got these advanced users to that point.
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