Lahey Health integrates AirStrip platform for real-time secure messaging

Lahey Health has adopted the AirStrip ONE mobile interoperability platform with their Epic electronic health record (EHR) system to serve active engagement and real-time secure messaging among caregivers.

In doing so, Lahey is trying to deal issues that are like those of other healthcare agencies, which’re similarly struggling to make better care coordination between nurses and attending physicians.

With 1.5 million ambulatory visits each year, the 4-hospital health system is busier than ever which has put a premium on effective communication between clinicians as they coordinate sufferer care. Although, as demands on caregivers have increased, so has the potential for inefficiency and miscommunication during the care collaboration.

“Our electronic health record (EHR) knows who the patients are on the inpatient side, and who is on their care teams,” claims David Reis, senior vice president and chief information officer at Lahey. “We’re using the application to intelligently deliver real-time secure messaging between caregivers.”

Implementing real-time secure messaging using the AirStrip application has enabled nurses to have straight communication with attending physicians in real-time through Android and iOS smartphones, instead of calling into a central operator first to have the doctor paged and waiting for their response.

Care team members change every shift, and that is updated in real-time throughout the course of the sufferer’s stay, in accordance to Reis, who points out that there is a requirement for “100% accuracy” to have texts sent to the right phone and the right user to ensure quick response times.

“In previous times, a nurse would have to look up the position of the person they were attempting to communicate with,” adds Reis. “With the integration between Epic and AirStrip, the nurse merely has to know the patient. As soon as they click on the sufferer’s name, a list of all the roles comes up, and they merely click on the specific role they need to communicate with.”

The capability has been “an enabler for workflow” because caregivers “do not have to figure out whom to send a message to—they just look up the sufferer,” Reis summarizes.