The Importance of Clinical Communication in Modern Healthcare

In a healthcare setting, time is critical. Effective clinical communication leverages methods, systems, and workflows to exchange patient and clinical team information, ensuring that the right information reaches the right provider as fast as possible. 

Communication plays a role in nearly every aspect of the healthcare setting, but it’s most important for delivering exceptional patient care. It’s also the basis for efficient workflows, improved response times, and overall morale, so it’s critical to get it right. 

In this article, we’ll go over the key components of establishing effective clinical communication workflows, the challenges and benefits involved, and how healthcare teams can improve clinical communications within their organization. 

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Why are effective clinical communication workflows important?

Acute care relies on efficiency, and that can only happen when a patient’s entire clinical team is on the same page. This requires constant internal coordination, smooth handoffs, and secure systems that make it easy for physicians, nurses, and other allied health providers to exchange accurate information. 

Establishing strong clinical communication processes is something healthcare providers (HCPs) must get right because the risks involved with poor communication can be detrimental. Miscommunication can lead to negative patient outcomes, delayed clinical response times, fragmented workflows, and even malpractice claims.

One study found that 49% of malpractice claims involved communication failures. Of those cases, 47% involved provider-provider miscommunication and 40% of communication failures involved a failed handoff.

Simply put, establishing effective clinical communication is key to removing risks, and ultimately improving the speed, effectiveness and delivery of patient care. 

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Who is involved in the clinical communication process?

Anyone who handles patient information is involved in clinical communication processes. This includes doctors, nurses, specialists, administrators, caregivers, and even patients themselves. 

The way information is exchanged can directly impact clinical response times, successful handoffs, and patient outcomes, so it’s critical to make sure everyone is aligned. 

To better demonstrate how the flow of patient information is exchanged, here are a few different scenarios HCPs should optimize:

• Patient care: Physicians, nurses, and specialists who coordinate treatment plans, provide diagnoses, and share notes or updates between shift changes should all be unified. Coordinated care is critical so everyone on the clinical team is up to date on the patient’s care and treatment plans. 
• Provider to provider: The flow of information between providers is also critical, whether during handoffs, consultations, or transfer of care. Disseminating patient and treatment information securely and accurately is important to ensure medical history and active issues aren’t overlooked. 
• Interfacility: Whether a patient is moving to a different healthcare facility or being transferred from a hospital to a home care setting, the logistics should be carefully coordinated.  
• Provider to patient: The relationship between provider and patient is another key focus of the clinical communication process. Providers must be able to communicate treatment plans, post-surgical instructions, and prescription information in a simple way for patients to understand on their own.

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What are some examples of clinical communication workflows?

Within the healthcare environment, here are some examples of when clinical communication workflows take place between providers and clinical teams: 

• Handovers: This includes shift changes, communicating between departments, and transfers between facilities. Strong communication and coordination is critical during clinical handovers to ensure that there aren’t any oversights or redundancies regarding patient care.
• Consultations: To request a consultation, a physician will usually contact a specialist via pager or phone. Swift response time here is critical for decision making. 
• Secure messaging: HCPs need healthcare-compliant, secure messaging methods to share patient information, especially details that include sensitive information, images, and documents.  
• Code activations: In life or death situations, code activations need to reach the code response  teams as quickly as possible. Communication plays a role in escalating critical messages and ensuring they don’t get lost among other alerts.
• Scheduling: The clinical team also needs to be aware of on-call roles so they know who to contact. 

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What are common communication challenges in hospitals?

The biggest communication challenge in a hospital setting is a fragmented system. 

Critical patient information or treatment plans get lost in the mix of hallway conversations, pages, emails, and phone calls that healthcare professionals typically rely on to communicate. Not to mention, different departments use different communication methods or scheduling tools, making it even more difficult to pinpoint the right contacts and communicate across the organization. 

All of these obstacles can lead to missed messages, delay in care and decision making, and increased medical errors. 

Let’s break down the specific challenges.

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Outdated communication methods 

Traditional hospital communication systems are outdated. For instance, pagers, while ubiquitous, can be unreliable. 

After making a call to the switchboard operator, there’s no feedback on whether or not the physician actually received the page, which leaves clinicians in the dark. Not to mention, switchboard operators are often overwhelmed with other calls from healthcare providers, patients, and families. One hospital’s switchboard volume consisted of 80% internal calls before they transformed their communication system with Hypercare.

Direct phone calls, on the other hand, can be reliable for conveying information quickly. But, they rely on both parties to be available at the same time. If the person on the other end doesn’t answer right away, physicians and nurses are left with the option to either wait around and delay care, or risk missing the call to continue their duties. 

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Workflow friction

Playing phone tag or waiting for a page to be returned also gives clinical teams less control over their workflow. This often causes friction and can lead to more interruptions, which ultimately increases the risk for errors.  

A recent study reviewed nursing interruption events during medicine administration and found that of those interruptions, 68% were low-priority events including phone calls and consultations. What’s more, over 1% of interruptions resulted in medication errors. 

There’s also the matter of alarm fatigue. When clinicians are constantly inundated with notifications and calls without any context, it’s difficult to triage or know what to prioritize. 

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Shift changes 

When patient care is transferred from one caregiver to the next, it’s one of the most critical moments for strong communication – and also the most prone to miscommunication. 

Handing over a patient’s chart and providing updates about treatment and diagnoses requires diligence and collaboration. Oversights and missed messages can lead to negative patient outcomes including delay in treatment or tests, incorrect medication, or even the wrong procedure.

Scheduling also plays a role in this. It’s not uncommon for schedules to change, and in a large organization, knowing who is on-call can be a challenge without an on-call management system. 

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How healthcare teams can improve clinical communication

Here are the key ways healthcare teams can improve clinical communication. 

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Streamlined information 

Clinical teams can improve communication by streamlining information and communications into one system. Doing so enables teams to have the right information and context without delaying patient care. 

Clinical communication platforms should seamlessly connect care teams with the right information, people and tools in real-time, including core functionalities like secure messages and information sharing, the ability to view on-call schedules, and contact information for different clinical providers. 

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Real-time communication 

Disseminating a message is hard to do without a unified platform. Clinical teams need to be equipped to send instant, secure messages to whoever is on call. If something is a high priority, teams should be able to escalate the message to the right person instead of paging someone and waiting by the phone for their response. 

This also applies to code team activations. The quicker the team is alerted and given context, the sooner code teams can be mobilized and the patient can receive the urgent care they need. 

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Coordinated care plans 

Coordinated care is critical for healthcare delivery to run smoothly. Using contact management tools to reach the right people, streamlining routine tasks, and taking advantage of tools that simplify communication, like messaging templates can all help with coordinating care more effectively 

Coordinated care is essential when transferring a patient between teams or facilities. Not only does patient information need to be diligently recorded, but it’s important for the information to be communicated in a digestible and usable way so healthcare providers can act efficiently. For instance, a strong, one-page synopsis of patient treatment is much more productive than a 40-page list of results.

Clear and concise communication is vital in ensuring that patients get proper ongoing care, minimizing unnecessary and duplicate services, and preventing outstanding issues from falling between the cracks.

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What are the benefits and outcomes of improved clinical communication workflows?

The most important outcome of improved clinical communication is better patient care delivery. 

When healthcare professionals aren’t spending critical time waiting for updates or figuring out who the on-call physician is, they can dedicate their attention to delivering the best patient care and treatment. 

Here are a few other benefits and outcomes from improved clinical communication: 

• Improved workflows and responsiveness: Strong communication and coordination eliminates delays, accelerates critical decision making, and increases efficiency among the clinical team. 
• Reduced administrative burden: The less time physicians and nurses spend playing phone tag or sifting through patient notes, the less likely they’ll be to face burnout and the more time they can dedicate to providing high-quality patient care. 
• Increased job satisfaction: Studies have found that burnout can lead to higher turnover and lower patient safety. When day to day operations run smoothly, the outcome is a healthier and more positive work environment for everyone.

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What tools can help improve clinical communication?

The key to effective clinical communication is centralized information. The best clinical communication tools are the ones that streamline clinical coordination, scheduling, and escalations of care. 

Clinical teams need to find all of the information they need in one place in order to improve response times and make critical decisions faster. 

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What to look for in a clinical communication tool

The best clinical communications platforms equip clinical teams with every communication tool they need in one place. 

Here are the essential features to look for:  

• Secure messaging: Clinical teams need the ability to contact the right people at the right time, and ensure their messages are getting through. Look for secure, compliant  tools that have built-in escalations and message receipts. In addition to SMS, clinical communication platforms should also enable communication by phone and pager to reach people across various modalities. 
• On-call solutions: To avoid wasting time sending pages to providers who aren’t scheduled, the clinical team needs a platform that connects them with the right on-call provider. 
• Code activations: Unified, instant code activations ensure the right team is mobilized and urgent hospital emergency codes are never missed.
• Integrations: Clinical communications platforms that seamlessly integrate with existing EHR, scheduling, and reporting tools make it easier for clinical teams to adopt. 

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Why secure messaging matters for effective clinical communication

In modern healthcare, the use of personal devices for clinical-related tasks has become increasingly prevalent. It’s common for clinical teams to create group chats and send each other a quick text regarding availability or patient questions. 

And while using smartphones and messaging apps like WhatsApp may be convenient, they don’t meet the strict security and privacy requirements set by healthcare regulations such as HIPAA and PHIPA. A common misconception is that end-to-end encryption in consumer messaging platforms is compliant with healthcare requirements, when in reality, that’s not the case.

When handling sensitive data like protected health information (PHI), security is critical – not only to protect the patient and safeguard their data, but also to comply with HIPAA and PHIPA. 

The best way to safely manage data and protect your organization from security risks or compliance penalties is to use a secure messaging platform. 

HIPPA-compliant messaging apps offer built-in security through secure messaging and storage, encrypted communication, access controls, and audit trails. By using a secure platform, you can safely send messages, images, and videos that provide the full context of a situation so everyone is better informed. 

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Getting clinical communications right 

Effective communication in a healthcare setting ensures your clinical team is able to provide high-quality patient care without interruptions to their workflow. Not only does this improve efficiency and response times, but it also reduces risks and saves your organization time and money. 

A unified clinical communication platform like Hypercare offers healthcare providers everything they need to streamline workflows, accelerate critical decision making, and deliver exceptional coordinated patient care.