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Crittenton Hospital Medical Center
Located in Rochester, Michigan, Crittenton Hospital Medical Center is a 290-bed acute care facility with a staff of over 1,600 and more than 500 physicians.
PerfectServe ‘5,000 Hours’ initiative will boost patient safety
Crittenton Hospital Medical Center is deploying a physician contact system aimed at reducing the time it takes for nurses to reach physicians by 5,000 hours on an annualized basis, Frank D. Sottile, M.D., Chief Medical Officer, announced.
Beginning May 23, the hospital will begin contacting physicians through PerfectServe, a technology that enables any staff member to reach any physician – or covering physician – at any moment in time, simply by dialing a single phone number.
Joint Commission targets communications
“The Joint Commission has found that communication breakdown is the leading contributor to sentinel events in U.S. hospitals,” Dr. Sottile said. “We’re simply responding to that information.
“We’re certain that we will be able to reach that goal of 5,000 hours by the end of this year. That’s significant. When you think about it, that represents 125 work weeks – an incredible interval of time.
“The implications for patient safety are very clear – and very dramatic,” Dr. Sottile said. “Our success will make Crittenton a safer, more responsive environment for our patients by making our medical staff – and our nurses – more efficient and effective.”
Consults to be confirmed
Nurse-to-physician contact is not the only area where improvements in communication will take place, Dr. Sottile said. “We also intend to improve our consult notifications to the point where none are lost or delayed. PerfectServe lets us measure our performance in this critical area.
“Also, physician-to-physician contact will be achieved more quickly – and more directly,” Dr. Sottile said. “This is possible because PerfectServe lets physicians prioritize calls from colleagues, handling them differently from calls from hospital floors.”
Nurses to set aside on-call schedules and phone lists
“Since PerfectServe lets nurses know when the doctor they’re trying to reach is not on-call – along with the name of the doctor covering – they’ll be able to set aside their physician on-call schedules.
“And since nurses are able to dial a single number to contact any doctor, they will be able to eliminate the lists of most-called physician phone numbers,” Dr. Sottile said.
Basis for 5,000-hour objective
The 5,000-hour target is based on PerfectServe’s experience with other similar client facilities, according to the company’s CEO, Terrell Edwards.
“Using data from comparable hospitals, we can estimate the volume of patient care communications to physicians, assuming a reduction of three minutes per physician contact cycle as suggested by the results of an independent study conducted by the University of Colorado.”
How PerfectServe works
PerfectServe assembles a directory of every physician’s contact preferences for every moment of every day.
“When a caller attempts to contact a physician, PerfectServe automatically responds to that doctor’s rules for the type of call being placed, and routes the call according to the precise instructions specifi ed by the doctor for that moment in time,” Edwards said.
“This means callers no longer have to know whether or not a doctor is on-call, or what contact device he or she is carrying. PerfectServe knows these variables and routes every call accordingly. Callers bypass the traditional bottlenecks of office switchboards and answering services.”
PerfectServe free to all Crittenton staff physicians
This new technology represents Crittenton’s commitment to provide its physicians with advanced tools to improve patient care and personal effectiveness, Dr. Sottile said.
