Ready or not, hospitals across the country are facing the fact that many of their clinicians are quietly using their personal smartphones to share medical information. It should be no surprise given the superior speed, reliability and convenience of cellular and Wi-Fi communication technology over land-line phone or pagers. The problem, of course, is that sharing patient data through unsecure texting could result in a serious, and costly, HIPAA breach. That is why Phelps County Regional Medical Center recently joined the growing number of healthcare organizations turning to Mutare to help them capitalize on the promise of efficient, cost-effective, and totally secure mobile messaging.
Phelps Joining the BYOD Revolution
As a regional hospital in South Central Missouri, Phelps employs a staff of 1,600 serving more than 200,000 residents. Recognizing the bring-your-own-device trend among its clinicians, Phelps administrators chose to embrace, rather than fight, the concept, realizing the possibility of actually improving communications and thus the quality of patient care while driving down costs associated with older technologies. Having worked with Mutare extensively in the past, Phelps’ technology business partner suggested they have a look at the software developer’s Vital Link solution for HIPAA compliant two-way communication.
The Vital Link Advantage
Mutare demonstrated how Vital Link not only provides speedy, two-way encrypted communication between users from a secure app on their mobile devices, but also includes centralized tracking and tracing of all message activity for enhanced reporting and compliance. Added to that, the Vital Link platform includes a module for multi-channel mass messaging as well as customizable IVR, survey and outcall capabilities for more effective patient engagement. The end result was another win for Mutare and another very satisfied customer.
Jeff McKune, Chief Health Informatics Officer of Phelps County Regional Medical Center, stated, “Mutare was very accommodating with our requests for testing and responsive to the input we provided. Primarily our focus was providing secure and rapid messaging between clinicians, doctors and staff, but the platform does provide further opportunities for applications for our organization.”Vital Link integrates with all existing telecommunications and EMR systems, works with all mobile devices, and has a simple, intuitive user interface requiring little, if any, user training. Additionally, it can be deployed on premise or in the cloud depending on customer preference. For more information on Vital Link and other unique healthcare communications solutions from Mutare, visit www.mutarehealthcare.com