Promise Regional Medical Center

Thinking Big Picture

O’Neal didn’t stop at improving the speed and effectiveness of STEMI alerts; she recognized many areas for communication improvement across the hospital using Everbridge Aware. Callbacks were draining the hospital’s outdated telephone system and paging and sending email as text messages proved very difficult to track and audit. In addition to emergency notifications and management conference calls, Everbridge Aware provides Promise Regional Medical Center with an audit trail that demonstrates compliance in daily processes, such as communications with physicians about surgery start times and consultation requests. Trauma services can use Everbridge Aware to gather data about team and cardiac catheterization lab activations. Security uses polling and escalation to call in more security staff and message the security chief, officers, and county dispatch as needed. The nursing staff is also putting a program in place to leverage the Everbridge system for shift-specific staff callbacks, which are currently done manually in each nursing area.

With Everbridge Aware, Promise Regional Medical Center’s communications department can participate more fully in patient safety via faster response times and faster notification of first responders. The hospital is also bringing together disparate contact information sources to incorporate more contact paths beyond home address and phone number stored in the hospital’s payroll system, the system of record that provides the data for Everbridge Aware.

According to O’Neal, “With the current economic environment and Medicare reimbursement dwindling, Promise Regional Medical Center is constantly looking for ways to reduce expenses while improving the level of care and safety we provide to our patients with an exceptional experience of care, every time, in every interaction. Everbridge Aware replaces four other tools by streamlining and centralizing processes. It’s fantastic.”

Support From the Top Down

At Promise Regional Medical Center, support for open communication flows from the top down. The hospital’s president and chief executive officer, Linda Harrison, announced the hospital’s rollout of Everbridge Aware during its biannual all-employees meeting. Harrison doesn’t want any employees to be surprised by what they read in the papers. To that end, she made a commitment to use Everbridge Aware to keep the hospital’s 1,200 employees apprised of all situations before the news goes to the media.

Peer-to-Peer: Victoria’s Advice

• Get creative. Think about all the ways you can apply the Everbridge system to operations, from emergency preparedness all the way down the line to patient safety and internal communications. The Everbridge system brings something to the table for everyone.
• Explain the benefits of the Everbridge system to employees and anyone else you will be contacting. By familiarizing them with what you’re trying to accomplish, why, and how, you will get more buy-in and achieve better results.
• Update your emergency preparedness manual to include Everbridge in every disaster protocol. Translate communication processes directly to elements of performance for Joint Commission.
• Use filters and attributes to help you target communications. Specifying job classifications (such as RN and LPN), shifts, and special skills make it faster and easier to reach the right people quickly.