KishHealth System Selects PerfectServe Clinician-to-Clinician Communications Platform
As part of its strategic initiative to increase quality and patient-centric care, KishHealth System has chosen to implement the PerfectServe clinical communications platform across two of its facilities in northern Illinois. Slated to go live in June, PerfectServe will enable Kishwaukee and Valley West Community Hospitals to eliminate costly and time-consuming bottlenecks and delays and increase direct communications among physicians and nurses to improve patient care.
KishHealth began attacking its clinician-to-clinician communication challenge three years ago when hospital leadership adopted a LEAN methodology. In an analysis of its discharge process, KishHealth identified the opportunity to reduce delays caused by communication challenges among clinicians around each patient’s episode of care.
“Specialists often need to consult with primary care physicians and vice versa, but in today’s complex healthcare environment, it’s not always easy for clinicians to reach each other in a timely manner — and it was clear the process we had in place wasn’t working,” said Dr. Michael Kulisz, chief medical officer, KishHealth. “We saw an immediate need to address the communications issue, not only from a hospital efficiency and clinician satisfaction standpoint, but also as a key strategy for improving overall care quality.”
After a review by the health system’s quality cabinet, consisting of a range of multi-specialty clinicians, KishHealth identified PerfectServe as the only system that would standardize its communications processes while allowing clinicians to set preferences for how they want to be reached. Unlike paging systems, call centers and answering services, PerfectServe ensures the secure and accurate delivery of all voice, web-based text and page messages to the right physician or nurse based on practice workflow rules, call schedules and individual clinician-defined contact preferences.
“While other vendors claim to offer a solution to different parts of the process — texting, phone or paging — PerfectServe has enabled us to take a strategic, holistic approach to all our clinical communications,” said Heath Bell, CEO, KishHealth System. “PerfectServe will play a key role in our ability to maintain high physician and patient satisfaction rates, deliver timely, quality care, and, as our network of care continues to expand, ultimately position KishHealth for success around future population health initiatives.”
Key benefits of the PerfectServe platform for KishHealth included:
— Increased clinician satisfaction
— The platform’s rules-based engine enables more accurate and reliable communication processes that make it easy for clinicians to connect with each other more quickly. Physicians can set individual communication preferences and adjust them on the fly;
— Secure communications across any mode or device
— Whether texting or emailing from any device, PerfectServe maintains HIPAA-compliance across all forms of communications; — Support for quality and patient-centric initiatives
— Connecting nurses and physicians at the moment it matters, PerfectServe supports KishHealth’s focus on achieving key quality metrics and enhancing patient satisfaction through its LEAN process improvements.
“The current state of clinician-to-clinician communications is a cumbersome and costly issue for many health systems, and one that is often overlooked — but KishHealth has recognized the significant impact it has on a range of patient safety and satisfaction initiatives across its system,” said Terry Edwards, PerfectServe president and CEO. “By empowering clinicians to more easily connect around any patient’s course of treatment, PerfectServe will support KishHealth’s ongoing success in delivering high quality care.”