It’s time for more accountable care at your hospital

Taking proactive steps to improve the way your organization communicates can help you achieve improved patient experience, reduced costs and strong outcomes.

Ricoh recently commissioned an IDC study, Information Mobility at Hospitals Drives Accountable and Quality Care, which summarized the results of a global survey of 100 director-level and above hospital IT and other executives on information mobility. The goal of the study was simple: Understand the current state and business benefits of information mobility within hospitals, and identify what sets the most information-mobility-mature hospitals apart from others as they seek to drive stronger quality and accountable care.

Room for improvement

• 47.5 percent of employees need to access more than six data repositories for information. Yet only 16.2 percent of hospitals surveyed enable search across all data sources.

• In hospitals, approximately 34 percent of information and institutional knowledge is stored in filing cabinets (20.2 percent) and employee’s heads (13.8 percent).

• Half of the hospital staff spends 50 percent or more of their time working from non-traditional locations.

Benefits of information mobility

While these challenges may sound like familiar frustrations, the study also sheds light on how information mobility is having a positive impact on hospitals facing these issues. To this point, hospitals reported the highest information mobility improvements in the following areas:

• 23.8 percent work quality

• 27.3 percent information flow

• 27.3 percent time for employees to increase patient satisfaction

These findings are a good sign for organizations looking to meet new healthcare requirements influenced by Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) scores as they improve information flow and ultimately patient satisfaction and outcomes.

How can you achieve similar results?

As healthcare transitions from fee-for-service to value measured by quality, the ability for organizations to communicate when, where and in the format that is most efficient is likely to continue becoming more important. Taking proactive steps to improve the way your organization communicates can help you drive stronger accountable care, including patient experience and reduced costs.