Nurses and other point-of-care workers at Heartland Regional Medical Center in St. Joseph, Mo., will soon be using iPhones to improve their communication and increase efficiency, thanks to Voalté’s popular first-of-its-kind integrated communication solution.
“Improving communications is essential to better care, lowering costs, and improving workflows,” said Dr. Joe Boyce, CMIO at Heartland Regional Medical Center. “Smartphones using Voalté are a key piece of our strategy to ensure our caregivers have the fastest, best communications capabilities available today.”
Voalté (nomenclature derived from Voice, Alarm, Text) consolidates all three functions on the versatile iPhone. The application enables users to send and receive presence-based text messages, make high definition voice calls across the hospital VoIP system, and receive critical care alarms on the iPhone, providing faster response to patient needs.
Heartland Regional Medical Center, developed from a merger of two prominent St. Joseph hospitals, is the first acute care hospital to implement the communications solution in Missouri. The Voalté installation will be integrating nurse call alarms through Emergin’s Nurse Call Gateway and will be replacing obsolete Polycom phones and pagers with iPhones to improve communication with care teams. Voalté One was selected following a rigorous evaluation of legacy handsets and voice badges.
“Antiquated communications solutions, such as voice-only devices, are no longer adequate in the hospital environment because both parties must be available in order to communicate,” said Trey Lauderdale, vice president of innovation at Voalté. “By becoming the first hospital in Missouri to use the iPhone as the next generation communication solution, Heartland has shown its commitment to provide exceptional care and service.”
The integrated health delivery system Heartland Health is an early adopter in technology and a recent recipient of the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award. The Baldridge Award is given to businesses and to education, healthcare and nonprofit organizations that apply and are judged to be outstanding in seven areas: leadership; strategic planning; customer focus; measurement, analysis and knowledge management; workforce focus; process management; and results.
“The installation demonstrates Heartland’s understanding of how smartphone technology can drastically improve patient care and response time,” Lauderdale said.
