Collaborative communications is the key factor in driving efficient patient care in healthcare, reveals survey conducted by Avaya at HIMSS 2011
Basking Ridge, NJ – Avaya, Inc., a global leader in business collaboration systems, software and services, today announced the results of a Healthcare Technology Outlook survey it recently conducted at the 2011 HIMSS Conference and Exhibition in February. Avaya offers an array of healthcare communications solutions incorporating unified communications and contact center technologies, serving more than 5,000 healthcare providers globally.
According to the survey, improving patient care and satisfaction through collaborative communications – which includes mobile communications, automated outreach, and technologies for driving workflows – was top of mind for most healthcare technology professionals. When asked “What results do you expect to gain from your technology investments?” the majority (74 percent) cited “improved level of care and response to patients.” And after respondents were asked what they considered to be the most beneficial value of mobile communications, the majority chose: “improving patient care by improving response time to patients (67 percent).”
The survey, conducted onsite at the Avaya booth at the HIMSS event and hosted by market research firm Exhibit Surveys, Inc., asked healthcare technology professionals their thoughts on various collaborative technologies and their impact in healthcare environments.
Overextended staff is top concern amongst healthcare tech professionals
When it comes to the healthcare technology industry’s thoughts on the obstacles to providing better patient care, Avaya’s survey found that respondents focused primarily on staff issues. Asked about the biggest challenge healthcare providers currently face, the top answer (32 percent) cited “overextended clinical staff spending too much time performing non-patient care activities.” This was followed by “poor or lack of effective communication amongst staff,” and “bottlenecks in patient flow.”
“With these survey results, we’re seeing concerns among healthcare technology professionals about staffing and time being spent away from patients, which greatly impacts patient care and efficiency,” said Bruce Wallace, Avaya’s healthcare practice leader. “To address these challenges head-on, industry professionals are turning to communications solutions that drive faster and more productive collaboration, which makes all the difference in an industry where every second counts.”
The survey also asked about video-based communications in the healthcare industry. Survey respondents felt this technology could make the most significant impact in two key areas — Physician Consultations and Distance Telemedicine – both of which tied for first place in terms of impact. According to Wallace, video adds an important new dimension to the healthcare industry, with group consultations gaining real-time visuals and enhanced document and image sharing capabilities. This can speed and improve collaboration for doctors, medical professionals and patients.
Looking ahead, healthcare professionals were asked which issues facing their hospital or facility would be most important to address in the next three years, considering Meaningful Use and Accountable Care requirements. According to the survey, “communication and workflow integration into Healthcare Information Systems (HIS)” was ranked as the most important (with 95 percent responding ‘extremely important’ or ‘very important’), followed by automated patient followup and mutli-modal collaboration.
Avaya offers a variety of healthcare collaboration solutions including the recently announced Avaya Mobile Device Checkout – a secure mobility solution for healthcare organizations that uses personalized WLAN devices – and Avaya Patient Followup, which uses automated outreach to call and follow up with patients after their discharge from a hospital. For more information on these and other Avaya healthcare solutions, please visit avaya.com/healthcare.
For complete survey results discussed in this release, please click here or contact Jonathan Varman, Avaya Public Relations, jvarman@avaya.com.
About Avaya
Avaya is a global leader in enterprise communications systems. The company provides unified communications, contact centers, data solutions and related services directly and through its channel partners to leading businesses and organizations around the world. Enterprises of all sizes depend on Avaya for state-of-the-art communications that improve efficiency, collaboration, customer service and competitiveness. For more information, please visit www.avaya.com.
Certain statements contained in this press release are forward-looking statements. These statements may be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “continue,” “could,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “might,” “plan,” “potential,” “predict,” “should” or “will” or other similar terminology. We have based these forward-looking statements on our current expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections. While we believe these expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections are reasonable, such forward looking statements are only predictions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control. These and other important factors may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. For a list and description of such risks and uncertainties, please refer to Avaya’s filings with the SEC that are available at www.sec.gov. Avaya disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
