It has been shown that communication is one of the key approaches to making healthcare better. By embracing modern communication methods, health teams enhance patient care, improve quality and safety, and reduce anxiety for patients and their families. When we designed our messaging, we listened to feedback from thousands of healthcare providers, patients and families and here is what we learned:

• Don’t want duplication: Some organizations have a great internal asynchronous messaging tool in place that they know how to use well and and in the busy clinical environment, they don’t need a second one, even if it’s on par or better. Therefore, we made ours in a way that can be switched off to avoid confusion.
• Concerned about patients and families overwhelming the health team: Almost universally, clinicians are concerned that opening a communication channel to patients and families will increase the effort and time required, in spite of evidence that they only reach out when it’s appropriate. Therefore, we ensured that there is role based messaging so the only people on the patient’s team who could reach out are the patient or the caregiver who is the key decision maker.
• Gradual learning: We have learned that many of these organizations eventually do want to to make it possible to turn on this next generation messaging capability, as they discover the benefit of communication across teams and organizations. Therefore, we made ours in a way that can be easily switched on after implementation.

When the team is distributed, asynchronous messaging makes it possible to avoid playing phone tag, missed messages, and unnecessary visits to clinics, Emergency Rooms and hospitals. Using phone, fax and unencrypted emails to communicate happens daily in our healthcare systems, and is not only a big drain on time and productivity, but also shown to affect quality and safety of care, as well as create a lot of anxiety for patients and families.

Smart teams use our unique secure messaging capability to keep the entire team around the patient connected, as communication is key to make health better.

On Careteam, every individual involved along the care journey can easily reach out between appointments and health updates, seamlessly ensuring that patients get the right care, at the right time - between health care providers, patients, caregivers and other support team members. The challenge was to create the capability to have messages one to one, one to many and many to many - as all of these scenarios occur in healthcare!

Three important aspects that we enable:

• Versatility of messaging scenarios: In healthcare, various messaging scenarios are prevalent - from one-to-one communication to one-to-many and many-to-many interactions. Our platform was carefully designed to accommodate all these scenarios, allowing for efficient and seamless communication across the healthcare landscape.
• "Desk" functionality for team collaboration: To enhance team collaboration, we have introduced a unique "desk" functionality. Whether you're on-call or part of a team, this feature enables quick access to messages and prompt replies to anyone on that team, ensuring that critical information is never missed.
• Role based access: On the patient and caregiver side, only those authorized to speak with the health team can use the messaging capabilities, and there are clear indications if the patient has consented for the caregiver to contact the team as well as whether that person has any advanced decision making powers. On the health team side, there are provisions to create appropriate role based access as well for clinical and administrative staff, in addition to the ones that are assigned to a given team and patient group. See here for our blog post on the importance of clarifying roles along the care journey.

Our secure messaging capability has revolutionized healthcare collaboration, empowering healthcare providers, patients, and support team members to work together seamlessly. By enabling seamless communication between all stakeholders involved in a patient's care journey, we are enhancing efficiency, safety, and the overall quality of healthcare.

Together, let's make health better through the power of communication!

Contact us to learn more about Careteam and how we simplify complex chronic care.