Unified communication helps nurses save two hours a day

The ultimate goal of any business investment is to positively impact productivity and the bottom line. That has been the main flag that supporters of VoIP have been waving for some time and a recent report from ZDNet explains why.

Denise Amrich, a registered nurse and healthcare advisor for the U.S. Strategic Perspective Institute, authored the piece which explained how a unified communication system that is paired with VoIP can save practitioners up to two hours a day.

"One of the challenges of being a floor nurse is the running around, trying to find people," wrote Amrich. "A hospital is a big facility, and even though the reporting and management structure is defined in such a way to operate in smaller floors or wards, there's still a tremendous amount of time spent by all of us, chasing down all the rest of us."

She went on to say that if a technician needs to find a nurse in a patient's room, he might know what floor to look in but will need to go room-to-room to find the right one. On top of that, without a centralized system in place, pagers, smartphones and other communication devices will be of little help.

However, with a unified system, the time it takes to look for others can be reduced by 45 percent and the time it takes to respond to call is reduced by 61 percent. That will equal up to two hours a day that can now be focused on other tasks like improving the quality of patient care.

While these numbers hinge on several other factors, it does show the potential of a proper communication solution.

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