Glenn Hilburn, Vice President of Clinical Systems at Grady Health System, says collaboration tools are key to employee engagement and satisfaction.
Each Grady clinician carries a mobile device, for example. These smartphones give users the ability to remotely connect to the hospital’s electronic health record system, as well as to expedite patient care tasks such as scanning medications and verifying identities.
But doctors and nurses also use their mobile devices to send secure text messages and collaborate around patient care. All told, Grady clinicians send between 30,000 and 40,000 secure text messages each month, often embedding patient images in the messages.
“Our goal was to untether clinicians from hard-wired workstations, so that they would have more flexibility, have more face time with their patients and be able to provide the care that patients need,” says Glenn Hilburn, vice president of clinical systems for Grady.
Grady Health System also makes extensive use of the collaboration tools offered by Office 365, and will soon implement Microsoft Teams. The organization is undergoing a large-scale performance improvement initiative, with teams working to identify opportunities to reduce stay length, create a better patient experience and improve other processes and outcomes. The teams are using SharePoint to collect and share that information, creating a central repository where team members can quickly check the status of a given area and contribute ideas.
Implementing collaborative workflows isn’t merely a matter of deploying the right technologies. “Collaboration is very much culture-based,” Kurtzman says. “You need a focus on a shared purpose, and you need trust. People don’t want to share their best ideas if they feel there’s a risk of ridicule.”