Phelps Memorial Hospital
New-fangled technology meets old-fashioned customer service.
Set on 69 acres overlooking the Hudson River in Sleepy Hollow, New York, Phelps Memorial Hospital Center is a 235-bed, not-for-profit acute care hospital committed to providing outstanding medical and mental healthcare to residents of Westchester and surrounding communities.
As part of its commitment to outstanding care, Phelps was looking for a way to move patients more quickly from the Emergency Department (ED) to inpatient rooms. In 2005 alone, almost 23,000 patients went through the ED and one-quarter required inpatient admission. Management recognized that a more efficient communication system was needed to reduce the sometimes lengthy time it took to place patients in rooms. So when hospital representatives happened to catch a demonstration of a new instant communication tool called Vocera, they immediately invited the company to demonstrate.
Impressed with what they saw, a team from Phelps went to Greenwich Hospital in Connecticut, where a Vocera system had been fully deployed. Within one afternoon, Phelps representatives felt they had a solution and hired third-party solution provider, TPC Healthcare, the company that had helped Greenwich Hospital deploy Vocera and train users.
Happy Halloween — Phase One of Vocera Rollout Goes Live
On October 31, 2005, the first phase of the Phelps Vocera installation, which included the ED, Housekeeping, Transport, General Services, Admitting and Case Management went live. As part of the initial rollout, TPC worked closely with Phelps’ Vice President of Support Services, Kerry L. Pisano and his team. Together, they made sure the technology would work with the hospital’s existing systems, locating enough access points throughout the hospital so Vocera users would not experience dead spots or loss of coverage.
After minimizing potential technology and backbone problems, TPC sent in a team of customer care specialists to work with the doctors, nurses and technicians who would be using the Vocera system. System access was granted through the use of Vocera devices — sleek, lightweight, black badges worn on a lapel, collar or lanyard.
Personalized Training
Working with eight to ten individuals at a time, the TPC customer care team made sure each department had a firm understanding of the technology and set up the system to maximize ease of use and minimize inconvenience.
For example, ED doctors and nurses were excited by the possibility of contacting someone in Admitting directly to check on bed availability. Because the admitting representative has varied tasks and moves around the hospital, using a phone or pager wasn’t working. However through Vocera, the ED staff would have immediate, direct communication with the admitting representative.
As TPC Customer Care Specialist Gary Blumberg explains, “While the system is simple to use, it must be designed the way users need it to work. For instance, you can call anesthesiologists by their name or by role, ‘Anesthesia,’ and you get the anesthesiologist on duty. If you’re in a department, you know who you want and call that person by name. But if you call across departments, you may not care who answers. You just want somebody, so you will call the department by name.”
This may seem obvious, but every hospital is set up slightly differently and each department has its own unique set of users, personalities and styles, which many technology providers forget.
Ensuring Hospitals Get a Good Return on Their Investment
“Healthcare customers are often at a disadvantage when they buy technology,” explains Kenny Schiff, TPC’s chief technology officer. “There’s a lot of promise from manufacturers and suppliers of the technology. But customers often wind up struggling to get a good return on investment, because that return has more to do with people than technology. Many customers are unable to train and support users on their own.”
“We take time from the beginning to get to know the hospitals we work with,” says Schiff. “And we don’t go away when implementation is done. Because we are local, we’re there for the long haul – helping them change and grow and leverage the product. National technology providers are competent and skilled at making these systems work, but they drop ship people in to do the work and when that’s accomplished, they leave. We don’t leave. We are there today, tomorrow, next week, six months from now. That’s our promise. At TPC, we understand our customers need more than just a product or a tool. They need the proper training, support and customer care to make each implementation successful.”
That promise is what ultimately sold Kerry L. Pisano and the Phelps team on TPC. Known as cutting edge when it comes to technology, “Phelps Hospital looks for tools that help improve productivity and efficiency,” explains Pisano, who championed the Vocera implementation from start to finish.
Creating a Partnership Between Technology and People
“For us to be successful,” says Pisano, “we need a win-win relationship – good for the hospital and good for the vendor.” Part of that success formula is finding vendors with the right expertise. In this case, TPC, a regional vendor with over 70 years experience, had the experience Phelps was looking for.
However, there was also the human factor. “It’s a pretty large endeavor. We trained about 250 employees in small classes of eight to ten people. The TPC customer care team was extremely flexible with us,” says Pisano. “They were available whenever we needed them — daytime, evening and even early morning training sessions for nighttime shift employees.”
“TPC’s training was also personalized. We have people from all walks of life using badges — from Environmental Services staff all the way up through physicians. They all came to the training classes, and TPC’s team related to all those folks, making them more comfortable with the system. Some were afraid to use it at first, but the TPC team helped them work through those fears. People are now so comfortable with the system that they call it a ’stress reliever’.”
Phase two of the Vocera project, which included Operating Room personnel, the Ambulatory Surgery Unit, the Recovery Room, Neonatology and lab and x-ray techs, went live on January 13, 2006, bringing the total number of Vocera users at Phelps to 250. And Pisano is eager to get the rest of the clinical staff — some 150 more users — online with Vocera soon. As for TPC, the team will be there already on-site, providing ongoing support and training.
About TPC Healthcare
Headquartered in Stratford, Connecticut, TPC Healthcare is a full-service technology and communications solutions provider delivering wireless voice, workflow/middleware messaging applications and managed support services to healthcare organizations. TPC Healthcare focuses on offering customers technology expertise, exceptional levels of service and years of experience developing healthcare communications solutions. For more information, visit www.tpchealthcare.com.