Is Poor Wireless Network Design Impairing Your Hospital?

Staying competitive in the hospital market today is about more than just treating patients; it involves focusing on the areas of service and care that elevate your organization above the rest. The healthcare landscape is advancing by the minute, and it’s critical to keep up if your hospital has any chance of surviving.

Perhaps you’re implementing all the right initiatives when it comes to patient-centered care. You may have a top-notch staff and the latest in technology. But, all of that could be for naught if you have a wireless networking infrastructure that is hindering your efforts to bring the very best in patient care.

If obstacles like slow connectivity or even outages in certain areas are plaguing your daily hospital operations, you don’t have the kind of strong network design that enables you to maintain that crucial competitive edge. Take a look at some of the ways poor design of your organization’s wireless networking infrastructure may be negatively impacting employees and patients -- and causing giant headaches for your IT operation.

Impairment #1: Poor Communication Between Employees

Relationships between physicians, nurses and other staff in a hospital setting are paramount to providing exceptional care. An efficient, effective exchange of knowledge and communication between employees is absolutely necessary in order for everyone to fulfill their roles and deliver a high level of quality service.

Unfortunately, the flow of communication between healthcare professions is often hindered by various factors. Communication avenues are typically multidimensional and encompass multiple channels, including email, phone, pagers and EHR systems. Each channel has its own potential for communication breakdown if the design of the hospital’s wireless networking infrastructure is not capable of supporting all of these functions. Faulty connections and equipment malfunctions may cause messages to be lost or go unreceived.

These gaps in communication have serious ramifications, including costly errors and weakened patient care efforts. It is the responsibility of IT leadership to prevent these problems by enabling the type of network design that facilitates strong, efficient communication throughout the hospital.

Impairment #2: Delayed Response Time for Patients

When staying competitive in the industry is so essential, the last thing you can afford to risk is your ability to respond to patients in a timely manner. If your organization is suffering from delayed response times, you’ve got a major problem on your hands. Worse yet, hospital operations could be in danger of experiencing connectivity outages that bring your entire organization to a halt.

Patient care is on the line, so ensuring that these outcomes are prevented is a must. Improving speed and quality of care by enabling stronger, quicker transfers of information has a great deal to do with implementing a robust wireless networking infrastructure.

Hospital staff have enough to focus on without worrying about delays in uploading and accessing patient information or carrying out administrative tasks. Fast load times and access to databases is essential when pulling patient history and keeping information organized. All of this hinges on your network design and its ability to keep data technology functioning seamlessly.

Impairment #3: Inability to Manage Sufficient Numbers of Patients

Of course, if the hospital’s employees are unable to respond to patients quickly, the entire organization is at a disadvantage in terms of how many patients it can manage in a given time frame. The longer it takes to treat and service each patient, the less patients your staff will be able to attend to.

Again, patient satisfaction hangs in the balance. If you’re running technologies and communication devices on a poorly designed wireless networking infrastructure, you’re sacrificing efficiency in care and crippling your staff in their efforts to treat every patient who comes through your doors.

Impairment #4: Greater Stress Levels for Staff

“Today, half of doctors, nurses and healthcare administrators say they are burned out, with 30 percent of primary care doctors aged 35 to 49 years stating they expect to leave the profession. While this raises the specter of a physician shortage in the coming years, of equal concern, it means that many of the providers working today may be depressed, overwhelmed and exhausted -- while still seeing patients.” (Becker’s Hospital Review)

Staff burnout is a real issue -- one that endangers the delivery of care in a hospital setting. Is poor network design contributing to the stress that your organization’s employees are already feeling on a daily basis? If they’re constantly running into technical issues and delays in accessing the information they need, it very well could be.

This kind of stress is apt to have significant consequences on patient care. Highly stressed healthcare professionals are not able to deliver the kind of quality service that is essential to treating patients well and maintaining the hospital’s competitive advantage.

Impairment #5: Weakened Security

Security of information exchange is of the utmost importance in a hospital environment. HIPAA requires high levels of encryption and security -- standards that your hospital must uphold in the design of its wireless networking infrastructure. If communication cannot be exchanged without compromising the security of patient information and hospital data, you’re putting the organization at risk of data breaches and HIPAA violations.

Many hospitals don’t have the luxury of bountiful budgets appropriated for network security. As a result, they’re likely to be saddled with outdated systems and a fractured network infrastructure. This makes them big targets for hackers and cyber attackers -- one very important reason to ensure your organization has a strong wireless networking infrastructure that supports the security measures needed to safeguard against dangerous intrusions.

Given all of these ways in which a poor network design could be impairing your hospital, there’s no question that focusing on your infrastructure must be a top priority. Today’s healthcare environment demands it. Delivering the levels of patient care, efficiency and security that enable hospitals to keep pace and thrive in a competitive landscape hinges on having an optimal wireless networking infrastructure.

Is your hospital suffering from the effects of a poor network design? Share your experiences below.