How Senior Living Can Use Smartphones to Streamline Their Communications
Providing patients in senior living with quality care is a team effort—and that team is diverse. It can include multiple doctors, nurses, other caretakers and, of course, the patient’s family. While keeping everyone on the same page can feel all too difficult—especially with people in different roles in different places at different times—it doesn’t have to be. Keeping everyone in the loop is actually as simple as having the right communication solution on a tool you already have in your pocket: your smartphone. Here’s how using a communication solution on your smartphone can make collaboration easy for any senior living care team:
It Keeps Care Team Members and Family Members in Sync
Research shows that family members want to have relationships with senior living staff that keep them informed and involved in care decisions. Family members may have information that ensures patients receive the best possible care, while senior living staff have key information that shapes the care decisions family members take. Unfortunately, it can be difficult for staff members and family to find time in their schedules to keep each other informed. Having a simple, easy-to-use communication solution on your phone means that senior living staff can quickly communicate with family members—without taking significant time away from work.
It Ensures that the Medical Team is Aware of all Ongoing Treatments
The majority of elderly adults have more than one chronic condition, so many patients in senior living have more than one doctor. The primary care doctor for general care, the cardiologist for high blood pressure and the pulmonologist for emphysema may be in many places at once seeing many patients—making it difficult for them to keep each other informed. This can have real consequences—over 20% of elderly adults in the US take a medication that could adversely affect another chronic condition. When medical care teams can easily share information with each other through communications on their smartphone, they can ensure that the care they each give the patient is complementary.
It Keeps Things on Schedule
Keeping things running smoothly means reminding patient care teams about the schedule. This can include reminding caregivers and family members about doctor appointments and medication adherence, as well as keeping family members up-to-date on events at senior living homes to improve attendance at the events. Being able to send reminders through individuals smartphones = can make it that much easier when making sure people don’t forget these important tasks and improves patient satisfaction.
Choosing the Right Communication Solution
The right communication tool on your smartphone needs to be HIPAA compliant so that the entire senior living care team—from doctors to caregivers to family members—can share specific information without having to worry about compliance or leaks. While texting, can do everything described above to streamline collaboration, it’s not secure and not HIPAA compliant. Vaporstream provides communication solutions that are HIPAA compliant and make it easy to send messages and share photos and important files with your team. You can automate messages to ensure that team members are regularly reminded about doctor’s appointments, medication and other important events. See what we look like in action here.
Contributor: The Vaporstream Team
*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Vaporstream authored by The Vaporstream Team. Read the original post at: https://www.vaporstream.com/blog/senior-living-smartphone-use/
