Spok Improves Care Team Communication at Vail Health

Community health system expands use of Spok Care Connect^® across its medical centers and clinics

SPRINGFIELD, Va. (March 26, 2019) – Spok, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Spok Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: SPOK) and a global leader in healthcare communications, announced that Vail Health has improved care team communication with Spok Care Connect, and continues to expand the fully integrated communication platform enterprise-wide. Vail Health includes a 56-bed community hospital accredited by The Joint Commission, Shaw Cancer Center, Howard Head Sports Medicine, two urgent care clinics, medical centers and clinics throughout Eagle and Summit counties, Colorado. Howard Head Sports Medicine is the Official Medical Provider for world-class athletes, including the U.S. Ski, Snowboarding, Free Skiing, and USA Climbing teams.

“Spok makes it easy for clinicians to find the information they need quickly and eliminates unnecessary phone tag and confusion when trying to reach care team members,” said Cassie Dirks, BSCN, RN, CCRN, director of the Patient Care Unit, Intensive Care Unit, and Cardiac Catheterization Lab at Vail Health. “It allows my team to spend more time with patients, while having full awareness of what is going on with other patients on the floor.”

Vail Health began its journey with Spok in 2017, and quickly saw the value of a single platform.  Spok Care Connect has allowed the organization to replace several manual methods of communication, automate processes for on-call scheduling and code calls, and improve collaboration and care team communication. The platform acts as a single source of truth for all directory data and delivers information quickly and securely to clinicians—wherever they are and on whatever device they are using.

“A huge benefit we have seen is that clinicians can act faster because Spok delivers the information they need, when they need it,” said Darrell Messersmith, chief medical information officer and chief information officer at Vail Health. “We have been able to consolidate disparate systems into a single system of action, which has ultimately improved patient care.”

Vail Health’s team has worked closely with Spok as a member of the Spok innovation partner alliance. The healthcare system made significant contributions to the development of the next evolution of Spok Care Connect, which Spok recently announced as the first-of-its-kind cloud-native enterprise communication platform.

“Vail Health is taking care team collaboration to the next level,” said Hemant Goel, president of Spok, Inc. “We are honored to join in their quest toward better patient outcomes and satisfaction, and look forward to continuing to work together to improve the way care is delivered.”

See how Vail Health has transformed clinical communication with Spok in this case study video.

About Vail Health

Vail Health is a nonprofit community health care system with 12 locations across Eagle and Summit counties. Vail Health offers a 56-bed hospital, 24/7 emergency care, helipad, urgent care clinics, cancer care, breast centers, cardiovascular services, surgery, childbirth, physical therapy, internal medicine, endocrinology and more. Locally operated and governed by a volunteer board of directors, Vail Health invested $20 million back into the community last year. Through the years, give-back dollars have benefited charity care; events and outreach efforts, including health fairs, high school physicals, blood drives and free speaker series; programs like ThinkFirst and Camp 911; and financially supporting groups like Starting Hearts, Mind Springs Health, Castle Peak Senior Care, HomeCare & Hospice of the Valley, Mountain Family Health, Steadman Philippon Research Institute, Vail-Summit Orthopaedic Foundation, Eagle County Schools and EFEC. For more information, visit www.vailhealth.org.