Inefficient communication during critical clinical workflows — such as patient admissions, emergency response team coordination and patient transfers — cost the average U.S. hospital about $1.75 million per year, according to a new report from Imprivata and the Ponemon Institute. Titled “The Imprivata Report on the Economic Impact of Inefficient Communications in Healthcare,” the report finds that healthcare professionals waste a ton of time by relying on pagers rather than secure text messaging services, which could help them [professionals] reclaim more than half of this wasted time.

Proper communication solution improves provider productivity, reduces unnecessary patient readmissions, increases clinical integration within the organization, while allowing patients to more quickly receive the care they require.

A significant amount of time is wasted during each workflow primarily due to the inefficiency of pagers (as cited by 52% of survey respondents), followed by the inability to use text messaging (39%).The survey involved more than 400 healthcare providers in the U.S. which were asked to identify areas of communications inefficiency in three specific clinical workflows: patient admissions, coordinating emergency response teams and patient transfers.

Respondents agree that a significant amount of time is wasted during each workflow primarily due to the inefficiency of pagers (as cited by 52% of survey respondents), followed by the inability to use text messaging (39%). Those taking the survey also noted that the use of secure text messaging could increase productivity, estimating that it could help reclaim about half of the wasted time.

“The ability to communicate efficiently is central to providing optimal care to patients. However, care team members are more mobile than ever, moving from patient to patient and between care settings. Paging remains the norm in many institutions, but this interruption-driven process is time consuming and error prone, and it takes clinicians away from their patients,” said Lynne Dunbrack, research vice president for IDC Health Insights. “Secure text messaging can address these challenges by pushing communications, alerts and notifications to their mobile devices wherever they are. Improved clinical communication can achieve workflow and process efficiency gains, resulting in increased patient satisfaction and potentially significant cost savings for healthcare organizations.”