Drive better patient outcomes and lower costs with improved communications capabilities

Healthcare providers with multiple locations are faced with mounting communications challenges. The confluence of ever-increasing reliance on the cloud, internet-based applications, as well as voice and video traffic, are all impacting network performance. The need for scalable bandwidth and improved communication capabilities is evident.

All of the above elements, while necessary and important capabilities for a modern medical practice, are draining bandwidth resources and creating potential security vulnerabilities. Further, the lack of robust calling features on medical practice telephone systems is increasing reliance on collaboration tools to share patient data in real-time. Furthermore, the need to connect anywhere, anytime across any device with patients and healthcare personnel increases daily. To cap it all off, the increased attack surface all of these innovations offer cyber criminals means that all healthcare providers need to reexamine their cybersecurity efforts to prevent HIPAA breaches. 

In response to these and other concerns, the adoption of unified communications as a service (UCaaS) continues to grow across all market segments. According to Gartner, from 2019 through 2025, the extent to which organizations deploy cloud telephony will more than double, from about 20% of overall telephony users to 50%.¹

And Healthcare IT leaders are getting it done, as PricewaterhouseCoopers reports that the digital transformation initiatives category tops the list of investment areas for healthcare C-suite executives who responded to the PricewaterhouseCoopers’ 2022 Pulse Survey, with 63% saying that they’re investing in a wide range of digital initiatives such as mobile, remote, and no-touch ways to access healthcare.

Poor communication can cause harm

First, do no harm are certainly words that healthcare providers aspire to live by. Yet, individual patients may suffer from sub-par care when communication issues arise. Cardiovascular Business reports that “Communication can also be very poor in our healthcare systems. Primary care physicians may not get the information they need from a specialist, one specialist may not communicate with another specialist … we have electronic health records, of course, but they are not yet unified. All of these communication issues lead to low satisfaction, which leads to poor reviews for these hospitals and health systems.”²

Clinicians and surgeons have traditionally been hampered by inefficient communication systems, causing a loss of around 45 minutes in potentially productive time every day. This time sink created by underperforming, outdated and disconnected communication systems can have a deep and negative impact on productivity and patient outcomes. Further, the cost of maintaining, managing and upgrading on-premises communication solutions is becoming prohibitive.

Modern communications solutions have multiple benefits

Healthcare providers with single or multiple locations need modern communications solutions that can minimize expenses by reducing capital expenditures with consolidated and optimized networking components. Given that 83% of workers want an all-in-one communications app, healthcare IT decision-makers should keep an eye out for one partner that can provide a solution for all their communications needs. Not only can healthcare organizations increase return on investment (ROI) and reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) by bundling phone calls, video conferencing, and messaging together, but they will also increase back-office efficiency by reducing paperwork stacks with just one communications provider.

An integrated cloud healthcare communications platform should offer a suite of collaboration tools, including voice, video meetings, and secure messaging. Providers should be able to use it to share important information with patients and with team members as well. Healthcare providers in particular need communications solutions that support HIPAA and HITRUST.³

And can:

• Allow dispersed clinical teams to collaborate
• Set up virtual visits
• Manage appointment scheduling via web-based chat
• Send automatic appointment reminders
• Support discharged patients with chat or video check-ins
  
• Deliver intuitive analytics dashboards for real-time insights
  
• With alerts and subscriptions that can be tailored to their needs

How Spectrum Enterprise Unified Communications with RingCentral can help

We can offer healthcare providers a fully managed UCaaS platform that includes telephony, collaboration, conferencing, customer portals, hardware and consistent innovation with frequent feature releases.  Packaged and integrated with Managed Network Edge and Enterprise Network Edge service platforms, it is fully managed and delivered across the Spectrum Enterprise nationwide fiber network. Combining our fiber network with a broad set of capabilities, including WAN, managed services and our expanded Unified Communications and collaboration offers, we stand apart from technology providers by partnering with healthcare organizations to tailor solutions to meet the unique needs of every practice. 

RingCentral is a cloud-based platform offering a unified, intuitive cloud communications platform for voice, meetings, team collaboration and more in one app. RingCentral ranked #1 in all four categories considered in the 2022 Gartner Critical Capabilities for Unified Communications as a Service, Worldwide report. It’s capable of supporting organizations of all sizes, from smaller multi-site practices to very large organizations with more than 20,000 employees.  

Learn more about how our co-branded joint solution, Spectrum Enterprise UC with RingCentral is delivered by Spectrum Enterprise as a single point of contact for installation, billing, support and maintenance.

1. Gartner, Critical Capabilities for Unified Communications as a Service, Worldwide, updated 29 November 2022, by Christopher Trueman, Megan Fernandez, Rafael Benitez, and Pankil Sheth
   
2. https://cardiovascularbusiness.com/topics/patient-care/care-delivery/industry-insights-4-healthcare-executives-discuss-biggest
3. https://assets.ringcentral.com/us/ebook/hipaa-compliant-communication-healthcare-providers.pdf