Emergency Notifications

Emergency management in a hospital setting is complicated. Many types of emergency situations can confront hospital staff and response time is critical. Seconds matter and so do the number of clicks it takes to send out emergency notifications to multiple contacts and devices. 

1Call’s reliable notification system helps to reduce response times using automated notifications to communicate critical alerts. Our notification software integrates with the existing technology used by hospitals to streamline emergency alert systems - helping hospitals ensure that every resource, from the most advanced piece of medical equipment to essential personnel, is utilized for quick emergency response.

Concept showing connected hospital staff using their notification system.

Notification System

Automated notifications and reminders empower healthcare organizations to create new efficiencies while improving the quality and consistency of each interaction. Hospitals can reach more people in less time, while significantly reducing their communications-related costs. Our notification system can be used for emergencies, events, changes in weather, or for everyday reminders. 

Features of our notification solution include:

  • Advance planning of notifications.
  • Fast notifications.
  • Built-in security.
  • Real-time monitoring and reporting.
  • Flexible notification options.
  • Recipients can be notified via SMS text messaging, email, pagers, automated phone calls to landlines or cell phones, fax, or smartphones and tablets.
A patient emergency prompts a critical alert to hospital staff.

Critical Alerts

MergeComm is 1Call’s integration engine and event notification software system designed specifically to merge and expedite enterprise-wide critical alerts in healthcare environments. MergeComm captures requests from hospital systems, such as ADT messages, nurse call messages, alerts, alarms, orders, and appointments, then our emergency notification software instantly sends those messages to the designated recipients using a wide variety of methods, including Vocera badges, IP phones from Cisco and Spectralink, SMS, e-mail, 1Call’s miSecureMessages HIPAA-compliant encrypted messaging app, and more.

With MergeComm, the notifications are automated and based on configurable rules so they can be customized to fit a hospital’s needs. MergeComm can send notifications via preferred contact methods to an individual, an entire group, or the current on-call personnel, using 1Call’s on-call scheduling module. This enables recipients to respond quickly to provide better patient care. 

All statistics are accumulated for each notification, providing an easy-to-follow audit trail for reporting purposes, as well as to help your organization refine your communication processes throughout your entire enterprise.

Red Alert Mass Group Notifications

Red Alert is a web-based and mobile friendly solution that enables hospitals and clinics to quickly and accurately notify the appropriate personnel for code calls, emergency situations, staffing shortages, network service outages, housekeeping, patient transport, as well as non-emergency reminders for staff about upcoming meetings and events.

Several security levels are used for system administrators, including passcode access into the system, and permission levels. Recipients can be required to enter a lookup ID and passcode, helping ensure your notifications remain secure. If a recipient does not confirm that an alert was received, Red Alert can escalate from one contact method to another and from one person, or group, to another.

Group notifications can be delivered as emails, secure messages (such as 1Call’s HIPAA-compliant miSecureMessages app), SMS text messages, automated phone calls to cell phones and landlines, pages, or via a fax.

Transcript

Luke Barthel: We use MergeComm in a variety of ways at the hospital. The nurse call, with the housekeeping. Does a lot of automation for us. Saves a lot of manual processing, trying to contact nurses, providers, as well as housekeeping, maintenance staff and IS staff so it's been a great automation tool for us.

Alicia Wise: With MergeComm we're looking to automay our nuclear medicine program and procedures where when a patient is ordered for a test the night before, we're able to automatically email or fax that information to the vendor that provides us with our isotopes and different things needed for that procedure for the next morning. These require great resources and are also costly and having that information relayed automatically helps to speed up the process for the patient but yet, and generate revenue, but yet save the cost of having things put on hold or standby because the communication didn't happen.

Matt Prole: We're 134 bed hospital. We also have some durable medical equipment stores and we interact with about 200 different providers from different clinics throughout the region as well.

We've been with Amtelco for just a little over a year now. Our experience with Amtelco has been very good. We kind of jumped into a big phone project and transition into some portable devices and our whole paging system and didn't really know what we were getting into, but Amtelco is right along with us the whole time both with our go live, they were on site and the phone support's always been great as well. Never have to wait very long to get an answer for a problem or a question that we have.

Luke Barthel: I think we're going to be rolling out the MergeComm area in our nursing home. We're going to be tying it to a second nurse call system there and that's very important for them to know when certain rooms get the button pushed so they're not running back to the desk every time. So it's just basically adding on more functionality in a different area.

Before Amtelco, the nurse call light would go on outside the room and it would alarm at the nurse desk, which would mean the nurse would have to be in the hallway or at the desk to see that. Now with MergeComm being able to send a message directly to the portable device, they can be anywhere in the facility whether they're on break, at lunch, down the hall, or in another patient room and can see is that an immediate alert or is that just something I need to get there in the next minute or so. It really gives the nurse flexibility, portability, and efficient in their work flow.

Alicia Wise: We use our HL7 interface engine to filter for patient discharges that were processed through our physician computer order entry system and then those triggers are sent to our Amtelco software which then alerts the environmental services staff that there's a bed that needs to be cleaned. This has greatly improved our turnaround time for patient put through. We are able to automatically notify that staff now versus it was a manual process before.

Matt Prole: The MergeComm is definitely increased efficiencies within our organization. One of the main areas we use it is the nurse call. The nurses can carry a portable device so when the call buttons are pressed in the room then those alerts are sent right to the phone so the nurses aren't tied to a desk. They can get that alert right away.

We've also expanded the using MergeComm within our housekeeping department so that when a patient is discharged from the hospital it gets sent through and so the appropriate staff know that that room is read to be cleaned and really help the patient flow become faster within the organization.

Luke Barthel: The comments I've heard from the nursing department are they, they love the software, they love the interactive part of it, but hey hate that it goes off so much, but that's nothing that we can control. That's from the patients. So the technology works great, it's the amount of times that the patients use it that they usually have issues with.

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