Collaborative Software – Serchen Blog

Top 3 Healthcare Communications Challenges for 2020 and How to Solve Them

Communicating with patients remains a significant challenge for healthcare providers this year. Despite advances in healthcare informatics technology, communications and collaboration technologies still lag behind. Patients report frustration at not being able to reach providers to book appointments or to ask questions about their treatment. Moreover, cybersecurity concerns remain a top concern of providers.

Three specific challenges loom large this year:

Efficient patient-to-provider access
Cybersecurity of health data
Use of outdated communications technology

However, these hurdles aren’t insurmountable. An integrated cloud-based communications platform can address each of these challenges. To keep your staff and patients connected, healthcare providers can sign up here to get RingCentral Office® for free.

What Is an Integrated Cloud-Based Communications Platform?

An integrated cloud healthcare communications platform offers a suite of collaboration tools, including voice, video meetings, secure messaging, and contact center technologies. Providers use it to share important information with patients and with team members as well.

This solution allows patients to contact providers on any device, anytime, anywhere. Patients no longer need to book appointments or wait for an emergency to communicate with their providers. Moreover, a healthcare cloud communications solution lets providers collaborate on patient health in a secure and effective manner.

Download RingCentral’s 5 Winning Strategies for Healthcare Communications Infographic

Challenge 1: Efficiently Scheduling Appointments

One of the top healthcare communications challenges relates to efficient appointment scheduling. A 2019 survey showed that 42 percent of patients believe it takes too long to schedule an appointment over the phone. As a result, patients don’t get the care they need, while healthcare organization revenue suffers.

A cloud-based communications platform helps providers overcome this problem. It intelligently routes calls to scheduling coordinators, regardless if they are located at the patient’s specific practice or an alternate, central scheduling location. That way, patients don’t get frustrated by long hold times, and they can book their appointments efficiently.

Challenge 2: Health Data Cybersecurity Concerns

In the first half of 2019, over 32 million patient records were breached. Hackers were responsible for over 50 percent of those incidents. Healthcare organizations of all sizes are at risk; a 2018 study revealed over 83 percent of practices have experienced some kind of cyberattack. The right healthcare communications platform keeps your patient data safe. Ensure that it is HITRUST CSF certified. – Read more

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Remote Work: Splunk + Zoom

As everyone is taking proactive measures to stay healthy, organizations are increasingly having their employees work from home. At Splunk, we are focused on bringing data to every question, decision and action — and remote work for us equals Zoom for online meetings and workspaces.

As our customers use Splunk for real-time data processing and analytics, they use our Splunk Mobile App (Android, iOS) when they need to take their dashboards on the go. Our engineering teams leverage this same capability as well when collaborating remotely.

Actionable Alerts – Zoom War Room

With Splunk Mobile, you can receive alerts wherever you are and take action. These actions can be anything — and we mean anything — as they are simply URL webhooks that you define to attach to your alerts.

Here’s an example of how we use alerts with Zoom.

The Splunk Mobile Engineering team uses Zoom to create “War Rooms” when we need to get everyone in the same place to troubleshoot critical issues quickly. Zoom makes it easy for us to automatically create these meeting rooms through its API. Whenever there is a Splunk generated alert, we attach a Zoom link and send it to all relevant stakeholders. Once received, all stakeholders can join the room immediately at the tap of a button. What’s more, they’ll all be looking at the same dashboard that triggered the alert in the first place.

Sharing Splunk Dashboards with Zoom

Splunk Mobile has sharing features built-in to the app. Examples include sharing your data as captured images or as a live link to an interactive dashboard. Our favorite thing to do is to either copy that link to a Zoom chat or Slack thread where people can kick off their own investigations. – Read more

Learn More About Splunk and Zoom

5 Tips to Balance Working From Home and Parenting

The average office-based worker may find the transition to working from home to be challenging enough. After all, you’re surrounded by potential distractions, tempted by your fridge and comfy bed, and loneliness creeps. Then you throw children into the mix, and it’s a whole new level of chaos.

Parents, take heed—if you find yourself suddenly at home with your laptop, your child(ren), and a calendar full of video meetings, take a deep breath and face the day with gusto. We have five tips to help you maximize your productivity as a remote worker while also keeping your young ones happy (and quiet) during your workday.

1. Create a separate work space.

If your home is also your workplace, try and keep your work in a separate room. This will allow for a psychological, as well as a physical, division between your personal and work lives. This will also make it much easier for you to leave work “at work” at the end of the day so you can focus on your family.

If you’re not the primary caregiver on any given day and someone else is on hand playing that role, SHUT THE DOOR (if possible)! Retreat to your separate room and set up your remote office. Revel in the distant hum of someone else attending to your children’s needs, and delight in the fact that you can simply pop in your earphones and get some quality work done!

2. Plan your day carefully.

If you know your children are going to be at home when you’re working, be realistic about what you can get done—and when. Plot each workday out in advance—how about the night before?—and stick to it. Otherwise, you might start to feel like you’re going to lose it with multiple deadlines looming and Play-Doh and soccer balls hurtling by.

If you share your childcare with a partner or a childcare provider, plan to do your best work when your children are being looked after or entertained out of sight. If you can schedule some downtime throughout the day to spend with your munchkins, all the better. You might just go back to work feeling refreshed, while your children may also feel sated enough to give you some quiet time to get your work done (maybe).

3. Schedule some time for yourself.

Working from home while trying to balance childcare and family time can be exhausting. Make sure you give yourself some time to unwind. Sometimes this may mean scheduling a free block of time on your calendar so you remember to follow through, but that’s ok—this mental break is crucial for your sanity!

Tip: Try to incorporate movement into your break to boost your energy and ward off the dreaded afternoon slump—do some yoga, walk the dog, or, better yet, play with the kids. They’ll love being with you, and you’ll feel better about focusing on work for the rest of the afternoon. As a bonus, perhaps they’ll be tuckered out and ready for a nap afterward.

4. Be upfront about your predicament.

No doubt many of you have been in the cringeworthy position of doing your best to conduct a work call with your little people wreaking havoc in the background. Some of you may have hit the next level of embarrassment—joining a video meeting only to have your children take the limelight.

The best thing you can do in these situations is to be upfront and honest about your tricky predicament. You’ll find that most people on your call have also been there or will at least understand it’s not the easiest situation to be in. And as your son/s or daughter/s starts taking their crayons to your laptop screen while singing their ABCs at the top of their lungs, you might just find your rapport with colleagues or customers gets a little bit stronger. We’re all human, after all!

When all else fails and you feel like you’re really not going to have a constructive call, you can use a team messaging app, such as RingCentral, to let your colleagues know in real time that now is not the best time. – Read more

Learn More About RingCentral