Bermuda Hospitals Board case study: Clinical communications fit for a country

Excellent communication is critical for any hospital, but especially so for a hospital that serves an island country and is more than 600 nautical miles from the next healthcare facility. Bermuda Hospitals Board (BHB) relies on accurate and efficient communications for everything they do, from routine clinical consults to managing disaster response on an island susceptible to tropical storms.

Go behind the scenes at BHB to learn why they chose to move from several communication systems to standardize on the Spok Care Connect^® platform. You’ll learn how they use Spok to support clinical communications on every device, whether it’s one-on-one messaging or coordinating a disaster response by sending mass notifications to hundreds of people.

The end result? Response times reduced by more than 50%, a simplified communication process that staff love, and a fit-for-purpose platform that can evolve with BHB as they grow. As Lloyd Holder, Vice President of IT Services at BHB, so eloquently states, “If you use the right platforms, people can effectively communicate. If you can effectively communicate, you will be able to do a job in a more efficient way.”

Video transcript

Dr. Roslyn Bascombe-Adams, Director of Emergency Hyperbaric Services: Bermuda is an island with one hospital. We are it. And if a major incident were to occur, it is imperative that we manage the major incident, but continue to provide care for all services at the hospital.

Scott Pearman, Chief Operating Officer: During a disaster, you have a few golden minutes to actually organize the response, and Spok allows us to contact all the key personnel, know whether they’ve been reached, and that gives the key personnel more opportunity to focus on the actual disaster response.

Dean Parris, Operations Manager: In the past, we used to utilize any sort of communication systems to reach out to our staff in the event of a disaster, we had to use several different platforms.

Lloyd Holder, Vice President, IT Services: We were struggling to find ways to connect our physicians with some of our nurses and other clinical practitioners. We were looking for a way to unify and standardize on how we communicate information across the organization.

Averylon Simons, Telecommunications Manager: BHB had a legacy system, which had its own challenges. Of course, we look for the best in class. Investigations indicated that Spok had one of the best-in-class systems.

Lloyd Holder, Vice President, IT Services: We had the opportunity to see Spok in action at the HIMSS conference, and one of the things we saw right away that we were impressed with was the real-time nature of the communication, across various platforms in various environments. It was really impressive to us, and it really was key in our decision-making to meet the needs of the country.

Dean Parris, Operations Manager: With the Spok system, the beauty of it is we can reach every person at one time now, so there is one integrated system to do everything that we used to use three or four platforms.

Nicole Edmunds, Assistant Project Director, IT Services: We are able to use the BYOD strategy (bring your own device strategy) because the Spok solution actually connects with just about any of the devices that are out there.

Dr. Roslyn Bascombe-Adams, Director of Emergency Hyperbaric Services: We have the ability in our search plan to mobilize at a disaster tent to the scene of an incident. At that scene, we will be able to sort patients, to triage patients, to prioritize patients for movement to the hospital. Communication is key to providing excellent patient care. It is important to make sure that the right person gets informed at the right time to provide the right kind of care.

Dean Parris, Operations Manager: Back when we used to do the call log, it can take upwards of three hours to be able to reach all of those that needed to be alerted that something was happening. With the Spok system, within 30 minutes every person has been contacted, and then I can go back to my audit trail and know exactly who is able to come in, who’s able to assist.

Averylon Simons, Telecommunications Manager: I think it’s certainly 50% savings in terms of time and response to get the team in place which is critical for code blue response.

Lloyd Holder, Vice President, IT Services: It’s quite simple to me. If you use the right platforms, people can effectively communicate. If you can effectively communicate, you will be able to do a job in a more efficient way. And so, what we’ve done is just try to simplify how one person can get in touch with another person.

Dean Parris, Operations Manager: It’s a very unique relationship, one that continues to grow according to our needs. So, I can definitely say that this platform is a fit-for-purpose platform. No matter where we need to move, Spok moves with us.