By Nicole Limpert
COVID-19 has made huge impacts on our health and day-to-day life throughout the world. The virus has been overwhelming to all, but particularly among the teams who are supporting and caring for those who are sick. Now more than ever, secure messaging platforms are critical to ensure communications are sent securely and quickly across these care and support teams. Here are the top three reasons why a secure messaging platform is an essential tool during these unprecedented times.
1. Communicate Sensitive Information Quickly
Whether you’re an operator relaying an important message or a doctor tending to a patient, fast and reliable communication is critical to ensure the safety and well-being of those involved.
Hospitals should consider updating their pager system to a secure messaging platform. Pagers have been shown to waste a considerable amount of time among healthcare teams. Compared to legacy paging technology, secure messaging can save staff up to two minutes per message.
When it comes to the safety of sensitive information, a secure messaging platform is paramount. Most secure messaging platforms use end-to-end encryption, which can ensure that personal health information (PHI) in the form of text, photo, video, and audio stays secure. Look for a secure messaging platform that doesn’t store messages on the device. Also critical is being able to remotely disable the app on lost or stolen devices to prevent unauthorized access.
2. Accountability with Time Stamps and Reports
It can be difficult to stay organized and keep a level head when things are moving quickly and staff is getting overwhelmed. Imagine that you’re a doctor, and you just sent a message to a lab tech via a secure messaging app requesting some lab results for an ICU patient. With the app, you can see if your message was sent successfully and when the lab tech read the message. Time stamps add an extra level of reassurance and accountability to your team, which is critical in times of crisis.
Most secure messaging apps also keep track of all message activity. This should include an audit log and a message log, complete with message histories, showing to whom messages were sent, when the recipient read the message, and who replied.
3. Urgent and Emergency Notifications
During times of crisis, it can be easy for alarms, notifications, and messages over a public address system to overwhelm healthcare workers. Conversely, some hospital staff may fall victim to alarm fatigue. One study records an average of 1.2 alarms are heard by a nurse every sixty seconds, or as many as 359 alarms per medical procedure. In addition, recent studies estimate as many as 90 percent of alarms in critical care settings are either false or clinically irrelevant. This leads healthcare providers to believe that many devices are crying wolf, delaying practitioner response time when a real emergency occurs.
To combat the effects of alarm fatigue, secure messaging offers features such as persistent alerts, event-driven notifications, critical alerts, and high-priority settings to ensure that vital messages receive a prompt acknowledgment.
COVID-19 has placed an elevated level of responsibility and pressure on healthcare and call center staff. These demands become easier with the help of a high-performing secure messaging platform that can meet their needs to combat the disease and ensure the safety of patients.
Nicole Limpert is the marketing content writer for Amtelco and their 1Call Healthcare Division. Amtelco is a leading provider of innovative communication applications. 1Call develops software solutions and applications—such as their miSecureMessages secure messaging platform—designed for the specific needs of healthcare organizations.