As healthcare continues to grapple with staffing challenges, organizational leaders are more keenly interested in technologies that will reduce staff workload and frustration. Companies with established track records in staff efficiency, automation, and communication are well positioned to help. TigerConnect, for example, is seeing success with its new scheduling products that leverage the company’s success with streamlining staff communications.
Healthcare IT Today had the opportunity to sit down with Karri Alexion-Tiernan, Vice President of Portfolio Marketing and Justin Wampach, Vice President for Scheduling from TigerConnect to discuss staffing, technology and their new medical resident scheduling capability.
Better Communication = Less Frustration
TigerConnect’s platform has long been used by healthcare organizations to improve communication and collaboration. Through their app, staff can send secure, encrypted messages quickly and easily to each other that can include photos, videos, and other file attachments.
One of the frustrations that TigerConnect removes is the need for staff to know who is currently working right now. Without their system, a nurse who needs help from the attending physician would have to know the name of that physician in order to have them paged or to have others help find him/her. With TigerConnect, the nurse can simply press the button “Attending Physician” and be directly connected.
It’s a small thing, but when nurses have already been burdened with so much from the pandemic, these small things have outsized positive impact.
“It’s 2022 and everybody has a device in their hands,” stated Wampach. “Organizations need to be using them more effectively so that we’re only communicating the things that we need. Proper communication really is about getting rid of the noise – getting rid of the stuff that people don’t need.”
“When you think about burnout it’s partly because people are having to do tasks that take more time than they need to,” added Alexion-Tiernan. “Being able to communicate efficiently and get that information at the right time and be able to respond to it in context, in the moment, helps them clear those tasks and ultimately makes them more efficient.”
Alert Fatigue
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), defines alert fatigue as “how busy healthcare workers and clinicians become desensitized to safety alerts, and as a result ignore or fail to respond appropriately to such warnings. This phenomenon occurs because of the sheer number of alerts.” A study in 2014 found that, on average, 2.5 million alerts are generated in a month which translates into 187 alerts per patient per day. That’s a lot of notifications.
“We really want to pare that down,” said Wampach. “and just deliver good quality message content that is relevant so that we’re not burning people out as much.”
TigerConnect’s Alarm Management & Event Notification solution takes a similar approach to what is used in the aviation industry. Although commercial pilots have access to every instrument and every data point of their plane, the only alerts they hear are critical ones. This allows them to maintain situational awareness (constantly monitoring the current situation) so that when alarms do occur they know they MUST act.
Resident Scheduling
TigerConnect recently released a medical resident scheduling solution aimed at reducing the frustration of creating and maintaining schedules for residents (see “Fixing the Not-so-Little Things for our Next Generation of Physicians”).
Wampach explained the company’s rationale for entering the market this way: “Scheduling those residents, getting them through all three or four years of their residency, and tracking all that information so at the end of their residency period, they can qualify for their boards – we saw a huge hole in that market. What was happening is people were using Excel spreadsheets. Residents were literally carrying around pieces of paper in their pocket about what their rotations were. It is absolutely ridiculous in 2022.”
Not only does their scheduling solution reduce the frustration for the person creating the schedules, the integration with TigerConnect’s communication platform means that everyone on the frontline will benefit.
“Not only will you be able to see your residents’ schedules through TigerConnect on a single mobile device,” explained Alexion-Tiernan. “You’ll be able to see your call schedules also fully integrated. When those residents are assigned to jobs, you’ll be able to see who’s on call based on the groups or the roles that are created inside of the TigerConnect platform.”
The feedback from early adopters of this new scheduling capability has been very positive.
Small Things Add Up
Given the complexity of healthcare and the myriad of factors affecting staff, it is unlikely that single solution or change to the work environment will address the staffing crisis we find ourselves in. Instead, organizations are smartly looking for solutions that are targeted at eliminating small frustrations. Those small frustrations, however, can mean the difference between someone electing to stay with your organization or deciding to explore other opportunities.
Watch the full interview with Karri Alexion-Tiernan and Justin Wampach, to learn:
- The surprising number of hours it takes to make a residents’ schedule using Excel or pen & paper
- Why context is key when it comes to communication
- How consolidation in healthcare may be the trend to watch later in 2022
Learn more about TigerConnect: https://tigerconnect.com/
Listen and subscribe to the Healthcare IT Today Interviews Podcast to hear all the latest insights from experts in healthcare IT.
And for an exclusive look at our top stories, subscribe to our newsletter.
Tell us what you think. Contact us here or on Twitter at @hcitoday. And if you’re interested in advertising with us, check out our various advertising packages and request our Media Kit.
TigerConnect is a proud sponsor of Healthcare Scene.
Transcript
[00:00:08] Colin Hung: Hi, I’m Colin Hung with Healthcare IT Today, and I’m sitting down with Karri Alexion-Tiernan, VP of Portfolio Marketing and Justin Wompach, VP of Product for Scheduling at TigerConnect. Welcome to the program.
[00:00:30] Karri Alexion-Tiernan : Thanks for having us.
[00:00:31] Colin Hung: So today we’re going to be talking about how important it is for healthcare organizations to make things easier and less frustrating for staff – a key thing these days. We’re also going to talk about enabling real-time communications and developing staff scheduling, which honestly is an area that’s new to me – and I’m anxious to find out more.
[00:00:51] Let me ask you this. The staffing challenge in healthcare is on the lips of everybody. It’s dominating the headlines. It’s on the lips of a lot of people here at the conference, and it’s definitely one of the concerns of executives all around the country. What role, if any, does technology play in helping to address this?
[00:01:10] Karri Alexion-Tiernan : I think there are a number of different things that technology helps with. One, in terms of transparency of schedules Justin’s going to talk a little bit about our scheduling software, but enabling people to be able to see what schedules are available and how they can manage their time.
[00:01:28] Justin Wampach: Yeah. I think one of the biggest things that we see is making sure that the right messages and the right pieces of communication are getting through to the right people at the right time. Everyone is getting bothered so many times during the day, for so many different things, that we really want to pare that down and just deliver good quality message content – things that are relevant to the people so that we’re not burning people out as much.
[00:01:50] Colin Hung: Gotcha. Karri, you were going to say something…
[00:01:52] Karri Alexion-Tiernan : I was just going to add to that and say: in terms of the staffing fatigue, echoing Justin’s comment, but also making sure that we can reduce the amount of alarms that are coming in so that we’re not overburdening those staff. That’s key because burnout is a real thing as well.
[00:02:10] Colin Hung: So TigerConnect helps clinical and administrative staff communicate better – that’s sort of your hallmark – AND collaborate more seamlessly. But let’s be honest communication doesn’t bubble up to the top of my mind, when I think about ways we can help improve the staffing burden. I think about things like, more overtime pay, better hours and those kinds of things. But you’re saying that actually communication is very key to reducing burnout.
[00:02:40] Karri Alexion-Tiernan : I think in terms of efficiency, it’s really important. When you think about burnout it’s partly because people are having to do tasks that take more time than they need to. The workload that they have assigned to them just keeps building up. Being able to communicate efficiently and get that information at the right time and be able to respond to it in context in the moment, helps them clear those tasks and ultimately makes them more efficient.
[00:03:08] Justin Wampach: The amount of things that people are asked to do, or the amount of calls and emails and messages and pages that happen throughout the day, just to find the right people. Communication, proper communication, really is about getting rid of the noise – getting rid of the stuff that people don’t need. Making sure again, that we have the right things, going to the right people, at the right time, with context so that they can understand so they can work more efficiently.
[00:03:35] Colin Hung: What I’m hearing you say is if I was a nurse and I was trying to find a particular individual to help me out with my patient. If I’m the one having to wait or hunt them down, that’s a lot of waste of my time. And so I get frustrated. That person I’m chasing is probably getting 20 pages or some other communication. They are getting frustrated because “why does this person keep trying to find me or bother me?” And so having that communication, I guess…
[00:03:55] Karri Alexion-Tiernan : And imagine that how that feels for the patient who is waiting for the additional response, right? To your point, if you’re sending a page, but you’re not getting any response back or you’re dialing the phone, but nobody’s on the other end. That’s a challenging thing to overcome.
[00:04:12] Justin Wampach: It’s 2022, everybody has a device in their hands. People need to be using those more effectively. The organizations need to be using them more effectively so that we’re only communicating the things that we need to the right people.
[00:04:27] Colin Hung: Now TigerConnect recently released a new product and it’s for medical residents scheduling, which again, I did not know a lot about, but this is an addition to all of the clinical collaboration stuff that you do. And you already released previously, a physician scheduling module as well. Why was it important for TigerConnect to get into this space?
[00:04:53] Justin Wampach: The residents are at the core of every academic medical center. And typically when somebody gets activated for a call, so a cardiologist or a hospitalist needs to find a consulting physician, the resident is usually the first point of contact.
[00:05:07] Scheduling those residents, getting them through all three or four years of their residency, and tracking all that information so at the end of their residency period, they can qualify for their boards – we saw a huge hole in that market.
[00:05:21] What was happening is people were using Excel spreadsheets. Residents were literally carrying around pieces of paper in their pocket about what their rotations were. It is absolutely ridiculous in 2022. We were able to take our software, wrap it around this whole residency scheduling problem – to schedule the residents faster, schedule them easier, but then foremost, make sure that now they’re part of the communication ecosystem – so that others can find them, message them, communicate with them. Really train them and prepare them for what’s coming next in their career.
[00:05:53] Colin Hung: So just to get some context. how long would it take somebody to make a typical resident schedule using Excel spreadsheets?
[00:06:01] Justin Wampach: Oh, 80 to a hundred hours, probably for an academic year. And these are doctors that are doing the work and they’re doing it nights and weekends because during the day, they’re seeing patients or they’re actually working or they’re in school.
[00:06:14] This is all stuff that they’re doing, you know, while we’re having fun with our friends and while we’re going out to movies or things that we did before COVID, but they’re spending their time doing scheduling.
[00:06:26] Colin Hung: When you have that information as part of your other TigerConnect product, by having the schedule in there, what you mentioned was that when this resident is on shift, now I know I can communicate with them, is that right?
[00:06:42] Karri Alexion-Tiernan : That’s right, and the nice part of the work that Justin did is not only will you be able to see your residents’ schedules through TigerConnect on a single mobile device, you’ll be able to see your call schedules also fully integrated. When those residents are assigned to jobs, you’ll be able to see who’s on call based on the groups or the roles that are created inside of the TigerConnect platform.
[00:07:06] Colin Hung: So what’s the early feedback being on the product?
[00:07:09] Justin Wampach: So we’re in beta right now and we’re actually receiving really good feedback. People have been doing this with Excel or paper and pencil. So to have a tool that’s easy to use, visually appealing, fast, plus it has all the communication tools that they’re used to. We’ve had really good feedback so far.
[00:07:29] Karri Alexion-Tiernan : The other piece, as well as, is that it’s fully built in the cloud. So no need to install on a specific device that’s in the hospital or to have to walk to that specific station to do scheduling or in a physician’s office. Wherever you may be, you can access it. That schedule is also visible from anywhere, whether it’s a resident or a physician or anybody else that you’re sharing that information with, they can get it in real time.
[00:07:56] So those changes, if there’s a swap that happens, it’s going to update automatically and everybody’s going to be up to speed.
[00:08:02] Justin Wampach: You know, up until now, residents have been left out of that whole process. Everything for residents has been done off to the side. Now with this system, residents are fully integrated in with the healthcare system. The same way that the doctors are, the nurses are and other healthcare providers.
[00:08:17] Colin Hung: Nice. So we’re here at HIMSS22. That’s where we are. What other healthcare challenges are catching your attention right now, or that you’re hearing from attendees?
[00:08:28] Justin Wampach: You know, I think we’re constantly hearing things like you mentioned about about staffing, about work satisfaction, how do we get more staff? How do we get more people? Not only on the physician side, but we’re really also starting to hear a lot of it around the nursing side.
[00:08:43] We have all these fancy systems in place now, right. EHR systems and things that can give us all these analytics and all this information about the past. Now organizations are taking that information and using it to look forward for staff planning and things like that. It’s no longer just what somebody’s gut tells them they’re going to need for tomorrow, but actual fact and information based on that. So those are some, some things at least I’m looking at
[00:09:09] Colin Hung: Karri, what are you hearing?
[00:09:10] Karri Alexion-Tiernan : I’m hearing about consolidation. Vendor consolidation. Simplifying the world of all of the disparate systems that are in there and how do you modernize as we go forward. So you have some of the older systems that are in place, that are important clinically and need to remain, but how do you make sure that they communicate with these new mobile devices or the new artificial intelligence technology or even to what Justin’s built in scheduling? Making sure that everything’s cohesive.
[00:09:40] So regardless of who you’re communicating with, you have better context and you’re also communicating with the right person. So there’s information flow from system to people to teams within the hospital.
[00:09:53] Colin Hung: Last question, where can people go to find out more information about TigerConnect,
[00:09:56] Karri Alexion-Tiernan : Our website TigerConnect.com.
