Communication Workflows in Pop-Up Bed Locations: We Can Help

April, 2020

It’s becoming too common for hospitals to be taking extreme measures to service COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 cases in the face of unprecedented patient surges. We see our customers establishing pop-up bed locations by re-appropriating existing hospital space and by extending facilities beyond the hospital to places like convention centers, arenas, hotels, factories, and ships.

For hospital leaders, the challenge of such drastic change is compounded by the speed and scale at which it is happening. For front-line care teams, the challenge is compounded with each gap introduced into staffing, workflow, and communication.

Communication is the foundation of triage, urgent teams, and patient care. Hospital leaders don’t have the luxury of time to consider how care teams will be able to communicate and collaborate efficiently and safely with each other and with patients. Designing new communication workflows takes people and additional brain power, both of which are as scarce as PPE as hospitals cope with the patient surges this pandemic is driving.

We at Vocera want you to know that you are not alone. We have teams of highly accomplished clinical executives, informaticists, and technology experts who can relieve you of the burden of ensuring team members can communicate with each other and with patients easily and safely.

We can respond to and support you as nimbly as you are needing to respond to the unprecedented challenges you’re facing.

Our clinical team can perform gap assessments remotely, with respect for your limited time, and without disrupting your work. We will put together a plan customized to your facility and situation, and execute on that plan remotely. We can offer guidance for urgent group communication workflows, such as mobilizing infection control and COVID-19 response teams.

From Inquiry to Deployment in a Matter of Days

A few weeks ago, one of our customers realized they needed to redesign their emergency department patient flow and expand their footprint to accommodate pop-up locations.

Our clinical team joined them on the phone right away. It only took one day to conduct a series of 30-minute interviews with the hospital’s physicians, nurses, and administrative staff. We identified the gaps in the hospital’s communication workflows. With insight into what they needed, we designed new communication workflows which our deployment teams were able to implement in a matter of days. And all of this was done remotely without putting stress on already strained resources at the hospital.

The hospital can now rely on an integrated communication process that supports its highly mobile care teams. Caregivers wear the hands-free Vocera Badge under PPE, allowing them to keep their hands and phones away from their faces. They can communicate instantly by saying the name of the person or group they need to reach, and are relieved of the stress of having to memorize new phone numbers and protocols.

Innovating for Unprecedented Situations

Another customer needed to flex capacity by converting single-bed rooms to two-bed rooms. The cost of deploying nurse call for the added beds was unacceptably high for a temporary, pop-up solution. The customer asked us if we could create a solution for Vocera devices that would enable patients to communicate with mobile care team members safely and easily.

The request led our technical teams to build a new capability called care team connect for use on Vocera devices that would do that and more. Watch the video at the top of this page to see how this simple yet powerful feature helps restore the human connection between care teams and patients.

What challenges are you facing? We are here to help. I welcome you to connect with me on LinkedIn or follow me on Twitter @rhondacno, and to visit our COVID-19 Resource Page to learn more.

Vocera hardware and software are not intended to replace a UL 1069 nurse call system. The care team connect feature is intended to enable communication between patients and care teams in temporary bed locations.