Cast & Curious

Category: Team Building and Teamwork

  • TEXThink My Juan 2 Send!: SMS as a communication tool in healthcare

    Having one of the fastest growth rate for mobile technology usage, text messaging is a major part of social communication in the Philippines today. Text messaging  allows  fast transmission of information.  It minimizes time wasted in call back protocols predominant in the era of telephones and pagers.  The growing, interconnected telco coverage spheres or bubble made it almost impossible for someone to “evade” messages as long as you know his or her cellphone number and there is a “signal” in that area. Since one simply does not share cellphone numbers to people they  don’t trust, text messaging is relatively secure than emails, which can be hacked or flooded with spam.

    In healthcare, sms’ utility went beyond social networking.  Fast, efficient and because it can be sent asynchronously to any person who is mobile, text messaging became the mainstay of communications for many healthcare institutions and HCPs in the Philippines.

    But sms as a communication tool in healthcare exposes patients, HCPs and HCis to potential risks. One potential problem is electronic healthcare data privacy infringements. Sms can be sent to a wrong person, read by everyone else and are sometimes a nightmare to track . The use of personal cellphone numbers to send/received electronic patient data or even critical care orders not only poses risk to HCI but more importantly, to the safety of the patient. Without a HIPAA like law to govern electronic healthcare data, HCIs in the Philippines need to create hospital wide policies and protocols governing use of SMS as a healthcare communication tool.

    Join us this coming saturday April 5, 2014 10:00 AM Manila Time (UTC + 8) for an hour of tweetchat and followed by a Hang Out on Air conversation , as we discuss  “TEXThink  My Juan 2, Send!” 

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    • T1: As an HCP, do you use sms as an official communication tool for sharing electronic health data in health care institutions?
    • T2: In what instance are sms of benefit to patients, HCPs and HCI as a communication tool? What instances are they not?
    • T3: Do you think SMS has been utilized fully as communication tool for low resource community like PH?
    • CT: If you have one sms usage policy suggestion for HCI/HCPs, what would it be?

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    Join our tweetchat discussion by following hashtag #healthxph and replying to the discussion using the same hashtag, #healthxph. To join the HOA watch the live discussion on this youtube link

    Resources
    Healthcare Texting in a HIPAA-Compliant Environment
    http://www.aaos.org/news/aaosnow/aug12/managing5.asp

    Eight Reasons SMS Is Unacceptable for Critical Hospital Communications Is SMS Good 4 Hospitals? R U Sure
    http://vocantas.com/documents/WP-US-8-Reasons-SMS-Unacceptable-Hospitals.pdf

    Building an SMS Network into a Rural Healthcare System
    http://www.kiwanja.net/media/docs/Rural-Healthcare-SMS.pdf

    The Role of SMS in Business Communications
    http://www.dolphinglobaltech.com/The%20Role%20of%20SMS%20in%20Biz%20Communication.pdf

  • Reviving the physician’s administrative function

    Right. I almost forgot. The medical staff do have “dual” functions.

    The medical staff has a dual and overlapping management system- the administrative which involves the activities of a medico-administrative character, and professional, which concerns of the clinical aspects of its functions.

    The physician is typically absorbed with the clinical aspects of his profession and rarely bother with administrative functions unless he or she is managing a large group practice or a hospital. Private, solo practice large reduces the physician’s administrative function to bare minimum.

    This may not be necessarily true in a practice that involves a tertiary institution.

    This realization struck me as I was tasked an administrative position of setting up clinical services for a tertiary level health care facility. While defining clinical functions is not a “breeze”, setting up additional administrative functions for the involved physician is like “walking into a storm”. Again, this is seemingly related to physician’s preference to clinical functions rather than the administrative part. In reality, most physicians shy away from ANY administrative functions at all.  I now understood why physician administrators grow (or lose) gray hairs by the hundreds each day.

    physician as administrator
    physician as an administrator, what gives?

    The reason?  My personal observation is this: As a physician, we were trained mainly on the clinical aspects of our profession. The few that got some training on the administrative skills probably got stuck in such functions. This compartmentalization of functions seem to enhance productivity on either of such functions but not on both. We were trained to specialize. Even solo, private practice seem to support this observation. The other reason is that physicians are generally slow to adapt to any change. Our comfort zone is just to comfortable to let go suddenly.  Thus, physicians tiptoes and are slow to adapt to administrative changes intended to improved  health care delivery.

    This is where I am looking for ways to get viral and enthusiastic response from the medical staff. This dual function of hospital based physicians are intertwined and complementary. Defining such functions is necessary for providing top notch health care service and the smooth operations of the health care institution. I’m not just saying this because I’m now part of a hospital administration. As I’ve said before,  have I recognized administrative functions before in a solo practice, my practice would have been smoother and productive.

    In your practice, do you really care about administrative functions at all?