The True Cost of Poor Communication in Healthcare

Communication is a pillar of clinical success, yet it remains one of the most common points of failure. Research from The Joint Commission has found that poor communication in healthcare contributes to over 60% of adverse events in hospitals. 

From inaccurate handoffs to overloaded alert systems, miscommunication can impact patient safety, operational inefficiency, and organizational costs. Even less obvious issues like alert fatigue and information overload can affect both clinical team morale and budgets.

This article explores the true cost of poor communication in healthcare – from compromised patient care to financial losses – and outlines comprehensive strategies to prevent these failures.

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How Miscommunication in Healthcare Leads to Harm and Cost

Poor communication in hospitals can directly impact patient care, clinical coordination and workflows, and create financial strain on healthcare organizations. 

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1. Patient Safety 

Patient care and safety relies on strong clinical communication. When clinical information is unclear, incomplete, or delayed, patient care and treatments are directly impacted creating the potential for medical errors such as wrong medication, incorrect dosage, or unnecessary procedures. 

Discontinuity of care is also a concern. It’s estimated that 67% of communication errors are related to handoffs.

If information isn’t passed along accurately during handoffs, whether from the emergency department to inpatient teams or from hospital discharge to primary care, patients risk receiving fragmented care. Critical details about diagnoses, treatment plans, or follow-ups may be lost, causing confusion for both patients and providers, and potentially leading to readmissions or complications.

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2. Potential Malpractice Claims 

Poor communication is frequently cited in malpractice lawsuits. In an investigation of 23,000 medical malpractice lawsuits, more than 7,000 were attributed to communication failures. These failures resulted in $1.7 billion in malpractice costs and almost 2,000 preventable deaths. 

When a breakdown in communication leads to an adverse outcome, healthcare organizations may be held liable. This not only results in costly settlements but also damages institutional reputation. 

Even if providers follow correct procedures, a lack of documented communication can make it difficult to defend against claims. Investing in better communication systems reduces this risk while reinforcing accountability.

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3. Operational Inefficiencies

Inefficient communication drains both time and resources. Repeated phone calls and pages, missed messages, and unclear documentation force staff to spend more time clarifying information instead of providing care. 

Additionally, research has shown that ineffective communication, poor organization of care, and delayed decision-making directly impact the average length of stay at hospitals. Longer stays  can lead to workflow bottlenecks, longer patient wait times, and increased stress on providers. 

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Hidden Costs of Poor Communication in Healthcare

In addition to the patient safety risks and financial costs associated with poor communication, there are also unseen ways that miscommunication can impact clinical teams. 

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1. Alert Fatigue

Communication channels are often flooded with constant alerts, reminders, and notifications. One study found that there are between 150-400 alarms generated per patient, but over 85% of those signals are clinically insignificant. 

The overexposure to a high quantity of alerts can lead to sensory overload and cause clinicians to become desensitized to the noise. Additionally, without priority alerts, clinicians may struggle to determine which alerts are urgent and potentially overlook important messages that are buried among non-urgent updates. 

Alert fatigue not only increases the risk of missing critical information, but it’s also been linked to healthcare provider stress and burnout, which can ultimately reduce job satisfaction. 

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2. Information Overload

Similar to alerts, clinicians also receive an overabundance of information on a daily basis. One study found that several operational and clinical roles send and receive over 1,000 messages in the span of a few weeks.

Too much information, especially when unstructured, irrelevant, or vague, can overwhelm clinical staff. Providers may struggle to distinguish between critical information and background noise, leading to delays in decision-making or errors in judgment. 

Information overload also adds to cognitive burden, making it harder for clinicians to remain focused during complex or high-stakes care situations. Studies have shown that cognitive overload contributes to over 80% of medical device user errors. 

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Real‑World Examples of Communication Breakdowns and Solutions in Healthcare

Below are real examples of how communication breakdowns can directly affect patient care and safety – and the strategies these hospitals used to address them. 

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Automating and Optimizing STEMI Activations

Door-to-balloon time is a vital measure of success during a ST elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). Slow communication channels can impede intervention during a time when rapid, coordinated intervention is critical. 

Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (RVH) in Ontario, Canada sought to enhance its emergency response capabilities across multiple critical scenarios, including Code STEMI. RVH had previously relied on a traditional switchboard system to manually page interventional cardiology teams. This process was prone to delays, as switchboard operators had to locate the correct on-call providers, page them, and wait for a response. 

To address these challenges, RVH partnered with Hypercare to implement a real-time, automated emergency response system. After implementing Hypercare, RVH saw a reduced emergency code activation time, faster decision-making, and reduced administrative overhead.

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Reducing Code Activation Times 

Mile Bluff Medical Center, a 40-bed acute care hospital in rural Wisconsin, had a fragmented communication infrastructure that led to critical communication gaps and workflow bottlenecks. For instance, on-call schedules weren’t easily accessible through the hospital’s intranet, there was a lack of secure messaging, and manual calls to the switchboard introduced an extra step in coordination. 

To address these communication gaps, Mile Bluff implemented Hypercare’s unified clinical communication platform. The new, modern system provided Mile Bluff with real-time scheduling, messaging, and surgical activation workflows across the organization.

Hypercare allowed the hospital to enable one-click activation for urgent scenarios like emergency C-sections and unplanned endoscopies. As a result, activation time for urgent and emergency surgeries dropped from 20-30 minutes to just five seconds. Clinical team members also reported dramatic reductions in miscommunication and coordination delays.

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Calculating the Financial Impact of Poor Communication in Healthcare

The financial burden of poor communication in healthcare is significant, even if it isn’t always easy to quantify. To capture the full picture, organizations should consider both direct and indirect costs. 

Direct costs include: 

• Medical errors and readmissions: Each preventable medical error or unnecessary readmission generates avoidable expenses for treatment, additional hospital stays, and follow-up care.
• Malpractice claims: Settlements, legal fees, and higher insurance premiums can add up to millions of dollars per case.
• Operational waste: Time spent clarifying orders, repeating tests, or duplicating documentation translates into measurable labor costs.
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Indirect costs include:

• Staff productivity and burnout: When clinical teams are forced to rely on fragmented workflows, their workload increases. Inefficient communication and increased workloads add undue stress which can lead to reduced productivity and eventually turnover. Higher turnover also comes with the added cost of staff replacement and training.
• Patient outcomes: Complications, extended recovery times, and lower adherence to care plans all add hidden costs to the system.
• Reputation and patient trust: Poor communication – combined with negative patient experiences such as long wait times and inefficient care – erodes patient satisfaction, potentially lowering ratings on surveys like HCAHPS. Lower scores can reduce reimbursements in value-based care models and diminish an organization’s competitive position.

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Strategies to Eliminate Communication Failures in Healthcare

Reducing the cost and risk of poor communication requires a proactive, system-wide approach. Healthcare leaders can strengthen communication by combining process improvements with the right technology.

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1. Standardize Processes and Protocols

Establishing clear, organization-wide communication standards reduces ambiguity and ensures everyone follows the same playbook.

Establish standardized communication procedures, such as I-PASS for handoffs and consults between physicians. Additionally, create consistent documentation formats and clear escalation pathways for urgent issues. Standardization minimizes variation, which is often the root of miscommunication.

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2. Unify Communication Channels

Using fragmented communication channels – including a mix of phone calls, pagers, emails, and siloed messaging apps – make it easy for critical information to get lost. 

Instead, consider replacing disjointed paging and answering systems by implementing a unified clinical communication platform. Look for platforms with integrated, secure messaging and on‑call scheduling. Secure messaging reduces communication failures and ensures timely responses with features such as priority indicators, read receipts, and escalations.

By consolidating communication into a unified, healthcare-compliant platform, providers gain a single source of truth. This improves message traceability, reduces duplication, and ensures that important updates reach the right people in real time.

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3. Tailor Alerts and Notifications

Not every update requires the same level of urgency. Smart communication platforms allow administrators to filter, prioritize, and customize alerts by role or clinical context. 

Additionally, tailoring alerts reduces noise, helps providers focus on the most critical information, and directly combats alert fatigue while keeping patients safe.

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4. Invest in Analytics and Feedback

Communication strategies should be dynamic, not static. Regularly reviewing platform usage analytics is essential to ensure your clinical communication strategy is working well. Analytics tools can track message volume, response times, and alert frequency to identify patterns and inefficiencies. 

With these insights, organizations can refine workflows, adjust policies, and measure the impact of communication improvements over time. Data-driven feedback loops ensure that systems evolve with the needs of staff and patients.

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Evaluating Healthcare Communication Solutions

Choosing the right platform or tool is critical to addressing communication challenges effectively. 

Start by assessing your organization’s pain points. This could be alert fatigue, information overload, fragmented channels, or inefficient handoffs. Any solution you evaluate must directly address those needs.

The most important features to look for in a clinical communications platform include: 

• Secure messaging: Secure messaging is a core functionality for improving clinical communications. Consider platforms that offer capabilities that unify communication channels and add more structure to processes, such as two-way messaging, priority alerts and messages with escalations and read receipts, and team-based messaging. 
• Pager replacement: Pager replacement solutions eliminate fragmented communication gaps of legacy pagers and answering systems by creating a streamlined workflow using dedicated call-back numbers and eliminating the need for manual routing. 
• Code team activation: Platforms with built-in code team activations can not only assemble the right providers as quickly as possible, but also help minimize interruptions and reduce alert fatigue. 
• On-call scheduling: On-call scheduling helps clinical teams create, update, and manage clinical schedules in real-time. 
• Integrations: Platforms with open APIs make it easy to seamlessly integrate with existing systems such as scheduling platforms, paging systems, EHRs, and single sign-on providers.

For a more detailed framework, use Hypercare’s vendor evaluation checklist as a guide for the assessment process.  

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Turning Communication Into a Strategic Advantage

The cost of poor communication in healthcare is too critical to leave unaddressed. Miscommunication is a root cause of patient harm, operational waste, staff burnout, and costly malpractice claims. Beyond the visible risks, hidden costs like alert fatigue, information overload, and staff turnover quietly drain resources and erode morale.

Communication challenges can be improved by standardizing protocols, unifying communication channels, and tailoring alerts to minimize interruptions and alert fatigue. 

Clinical communication platforms like Hypercare offer a unified solution to improve communication and interoperability, and streamline workflows. Book a demo to learn more about Hypercare’s clinical communication solutions.