Improving Patient Experience and Care: The Impact of Unified Communications and Collaboration on Digital Healthcare

Adapting to the New Norm: Telehealth’s Impact on Healthcare Communication Technology

The healthcare industry has experienced a significant technological shift due to the proliferation of telehealth or telemedicine services since the COVID-19 pandemic, forever changing the way healthcare professionals and patients communicate. 

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Today, healthcare IT teams across the globe deploy a robust mix of unified communication and collaboration (UC&C) solutions -Avaya, Cisco Webex, Microsoft Teams, Zoom and more- to meet the communications needs of their patients, partners, and employees. Healthcare companies are increasingly reliant on communication tools, encompassing video, voice, web, and/or collaboration platforms. This reliance has only intensified in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

With healthcare organizations leaning on cutting-edge UC&C technology, the need to ensure 100% uptime is critical to delivering quality patient care, an excellent patient experience, and increasing employee morale and productivity.

Delivering this experience hinges on one indispensable element: activating robust observability solutions that proactively monitor, test, and troubleshoot UC&C and contact center environments.

Rising Telehealth Market: Embracing Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Trends in Digital Healthcare

To meet this growing demand, healthcare companies are adopting new and innovative digital healthcare technologies, many of which incorporate artificial intelligence (AI). The Consumer Technology Association released key trends emerging for digital health, including:

• 42% of U.S. adults familiar with AI expect the healthcare field will experience the greatest positive impact from AI, compared to 20 other sectors surveyed.
• 64% of U.S. adults familiar with AI are open (very to somewhat) to consulting with an AI doctor remotely.
• More than 2 in 5 (42%) are open to having AI technology tools make medical diagnoses for them.
• More than a quarter (29%) are also open to having AI tech tools perform surgery on them.

With the proliferation of digital health technologies, it has never been more crucial for healthcare organizations to uphold a seamless and fault-free communication ecosystem. 

It’s imperative for healthcare organizations to address and resolve communication issues before they escalate, emphasizing the critical importance and urgency of proactive monitoring.

Addressing Risks: Testing and Monitoring in Healthcare UC&C and Contact Center Operations

Diagnostic testing and ongoing monitoring are vital for identifying and treating underlying issues for healthcare patients. The same is true of healthcare UC&C systems and contact centers — you must test, monitor, and treat these complex ecosystems to ensure optimal performance. 

Failure to do so negatively impacts healthcare organizations in several ways: 

• Reputational damage and doubt in expertise, leading to patient churn
• Impeding digital transformation efforts due to lost patient trust in virtual care
• Aversion to telehealth caused by unreliable communications, causing a delay in patient care and increased pressure on other channels 
• Employee frustration due to recurring UC&C issues, contributing to burnout and staff turnover
• Inefficient telehealth visits and internal meetings, impacting productivity and causing cascading schedule back-ups

"Reliable communication is the backbone of telehealth. Failure to adequately test and monitor UC&C environments puts healthcare organizations at risk of patient aversion to telehealth, communication breakdowns, subpar patient experiences, and disruptions in care."

Ali Athar // IR, Vice President of Sales Engineering

Safeguarding Reputation: The Criticality of Uninterrupted Unified Communications in Telehealth

The transformation in perception of using collaboration and videoconferencing solutions for telehealth visits during the pandemic was nothing short of a phenomenon. 

• 76% of people over the age of 55 have used telemedicine
• 80% of consumers have used telemedicine at least once
• 74% of millennials prefer telehealth visits to in-person exams 

The healthcare industry previously faced challenges persuading people to turn-on their cameras and make calls due to significant public aversion and concerns about technical reliability. Today, the prevailing public perception and their use of collaboration tools — whether it be video, voice, or web-based solutions — has completely flipped. While a positive shift for technology and telemedicine, the significant adoption of unified communications tools poses new risks for business-to-customer interactions. 

Before the pandemic, call failures were often attributed to the prevailing belief that the technology was not reliable. Now, with increased reliance on technology and significant adoption by the general public, any failure is swiftly blamed on the organization, posing reputational risks. 

It’s critical for large healthcare organizations to proficiently manage and monitor their UC&C ecosystems. This ensures every communication, whether provider to patient or internal, connects reliably and maintains adequate bandwidth and stability. Ultimately, this safeguards reputation and prevents wasting valuable time for patients, providers, and employees.

Unified Communications: A Catalyst
for Improving Patient Care and Operational Efficiency

In a 2022 survey by HIMSS, the most common challenges employees identified when using collaboration tools in healthcare included the inability to integrate collaboration into other workflows (38%) and poor call and video quality (30%).

Patient satisfaction is 10% higher with telemedicine services than for in-person consultations, according to a recent Kaiser Permanente Study.

A strong UC&C system is vital in healthcare; neglecting it can lead to cascading issues, detrimentally affecting both operational efficiency and patient care.

Healthcare relies heavily on video and audio calls for virtual meetings, multidisciplinary consultations, and collaborative decision-making among staff. Imagine internal communication channels experiencing frequent disruptions or poor audio and video quality, leading to misunderstandings, delayed decision-making, and potential errors in patient care. For instance, in a virtual tumor board meeting where oncologists and radiologists discuss complex cases, a glitchy connection can impede effective sharing and interpretation of medical imaging, compromising the quality of treatment decisions.

In telehealth, where communication occurs directly between physicians and the patients, the implications of an unstable video and audio calling platform become even more pronounced. As patients increasingly turn to virtual consultations for their healthcare needs, any deficiency in the video and audio calling infrastructure can severely impact patient experience. Imagine a patient seeking a virtual follow-up appointment for a chronic condition encountering constant dropouts or subpar audio. This can lead to misunderstandings about the patient’s symptoms or treatment progress, hindering effective communication between healthcare providers and patients and potentially deteriorating health outcomes. 

Combatting Employee Burnout: The Critical Role of Proactive UC&C Monitoring in Healthcare

UC&C environments that lack proactive monitoring and management and experience poor video and audio connectivity are susceptible to increased employee frustration, burnout, and turnover. 

The U.S. Surgeon General’s Office identified and tracked key causes of employee burnout in healthcare, all of which can be significantly impacted by a subpar unified communications experience, including:

• Excessive workloads

• Administrative burdens

• Limited say in scheduling

• Lack of organizational support

Monitoring communications ecosystems is not only a strategic imperative for modern healthcare delivery, but also a foundational element in building a resilient, patient-centered healthcare system and workforce.

Persistent connectivity issues and technical glitches among clinical teams contribute to an epidemic of burnout stemming from administrative overload.

Such technology risks prompt potential de-implementation or replacement, as healthcare organizations prioritize addressing burnout drivers to safeguard their valuable workforce.

Katie Seidler // Cone Health System Strategy Manager

Adapting to the Growing Complexity of Healthcare Communications

As demand grows for reliable telehealth and internal communications, so does the complexity of UC&C environments. 

Healthcare organizations now navigate hybrid ecosystems incorporating numerous platforms like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Webex, Google Meet, and others, alongside contact centers and electronic health record systems. This complexity is compounded by the expansive modern workplace, spanning traditional offices and remote settings. Moreover, the healthcare campus has evolved beyond single buildings to encompass a range of spaces including offices, healthcare facilities, home offices, and even travel destinations.

The proliferation of unified communications in healthcare has increased the difficulty to establish and maintain seamless and compatible communication networks. The success of healthcare companies managing complex, multi-vendor communication environments rely heavily on activating a monitoring solution that shares performance intelligence across the entire system on a single pane of glass.

Banner Health Activates Automatic Failovers and Observability Solution to Ensure 100% Uptime

Banner Health is a premier U.S. health system, boasting over 50,000 employees across 30 hospitals, three academic medical centers, and various related health entities spanning six states.

Banner Health IT Director, Kipp Drake, shares how activating automatic failovers and observability solutions has ensured 100% uptime:

To ensure seamless calling across multiple locations, Banner Health built a highly dependable multi-cluster, on-premises unified communications system engineered for “seven-nines” reliability. If there is a call manager failure or some other connectivity incident, the system immediately and automatically re-routes the affected endpoints to maintain 100% uptime. As a result, thankfully, Banner Health users do not experience any outages. However, while such automatic failovers prevent user interruption, activating a robust observability solution like IR Collaborate enables IT teams to monitor, identify and quickly resolve the issues causing failovers.

Multi-vendor UC&C Monitoring: Mitigating Native Tool Limitations and Cross-Platform Risks

The complex nature of today’s communication ecosystems presents a challenge to healthcare organizations. Healthcare companies relying solely on native monitoring tools are limited to assessing the performance of that single platform. 

Furthermore, these tools offer limited, if any, insight into other critical components of UC&C ecosystems, like the performance of networks, SBCs, endpoints, and more.

Deploying a multi-vendor UC&C monitoring solution is paramount to address potential issues across disparate platforms before they escalate. Ensuring interoperability between communication platforms enables seamless integrations, minimizes disruptions, and prevents compatibility issues.

Additionally, regularly assessing the performance and reliability of platforms through comprehensive monitoring enables organizations to stay ahead of technological advancements, security threats, and user feedback. This proactive approach enables timely adjustments and optimizations, ensuring that the communication ecosystem remains robust, responsive, and tailored to the evolving needs of healthcare organizations.

Conclusion

Healthcare organizations must realize that the fusion of technology and patient care is inevitable. 

UC&C platforms are the cornerstone of healthcare technology ecosystems. Prioritizing the resilience and reliability of communication ecosystems emerges as a fundamental strategy for healthcare organizations committed to delivering quality patient care, excellent patient experience, and increasing employee morale and productivity. 

Healthcare organizations equipped with the right skills and tools to comprehensively monitor, test, troubleshoot, and optimize UC&C environments are well-placed to stay ahead of the curve, provide superior patient outcomes, and emerge as an industry leader. 

Ready to learn more about the leading multivendor monitoring solution IR Collaborate?