LAS VEGAS -- Healthcare teams are striving to work as teams but in many cases, they lack the technology to communicate as a team. That was the message delivered by Neha Patel, MD, director of mobile strategy and applications, and director of quality for Penn Medicine in a HIMSS16 educational session Driving Value from Technology.

Patel told her audience at HIMSS16 that a few years ago she was compelled to look at her system as whole, focusing on activity that wasn’t helping quality. In her search for areas to improve, she ended up honing in on communications. Specifically, she discovered providers were struggling to communicate easily and automatically with each other because they lacked the technology.

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Ineffective communication can lead to errors, she said, and there are dollars and losses that can be ascribed to that ineffective communication as well as operational inefficiencies. For example, patients weren’t leaving when they were supposed to, or as quickly as they could, because each team member wasn’t coordinating their care.

“Most importantly, it leads to a culture of low expectations within your healthcare system where people get used to functioning at certain level where they’re not on the same page,” said Patel.

In an effort to address this issue, she decided to see what secured messaging would look like among physicians, nurses and house staff in their three general medical units and one surgical unit.

“What we figured out is when you give providers a tool that they actually can use to provide better care for the patients they’re gonna use it. You won’t have to force them” said Patel.

And use it they did. Patel said after one year staff were sending messages, including group messages. So it was enabling staff to really communicate as a care team. Many were reading messages quickly. 54 percent were reading their message in one minute attending and nurses showed only a slightly lower percentage.

Patel said her team also asked how much time they had saved using the messaging technology. Attendings and residents said they saved they saved hours a day, and nurse gave similar feedback. She also said significant improvement in length of stay was byproduct as well, as many of the messages had to do with discharges and coordinating care

Patel said with technology like this, you’ll want to decide where it will be best used and integrated into operations, like EHR, mobile apps with clinical data, directory/scheduling. You also need to think about policies pertaining to users bringing in their own devices. Most of all, you have to figure out how to measure success.

“That’s how you’re going to get funding for some of these resources. You really have to be able to track what your solution was meant to do,” said Patel.

Twitter: @BethJSanborn

This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.