A Physician Communication System Doctors Actually Like — and Use

Your communications team works hard to produce content that engages physicians. The problem is that your clinicians may completely ignore it. How do you get them to pay attention?

Recruiting, retaining, and communicating effectively with your attending physicians affects everything from patient satisfaction and operating costs to hospital reputation and safety. As health care networks get bigger, communication to an expanding employee base becomes a growing challenge.

Jim Blazar, executive vice president and chief strategy officer, Hackensack Meridian Health

Communication teams today work to get pertinent news to clinical departments throughout their networks as efficiently as possible. The problem with this is that doctors don’t really care what’s happening across the network; they care about their specialty and their hospital. They didn’t sign up to hear about enterprise solutions that don’t directly relate to their workflow, according to Jim Blazar, executive vice president and chief strategy officer at Hackensack Meridian Health.

“We needed a [physician communication] solution that would work well not just across the network, but also at any one facility, one specialty at a time,” explains Blazar.

“It used to be that doctors would arrive at the hospital in the morning, stop at the cafeteria for coffee or breakfast, and run into other physicians, nurses, and lab personnel. They didn’t have to call each other because they knew they’d see each other to talk about cases and share information,” says Blazar.

With attending physicians stretched thin among several network locations, Blazar and his team felt the need to regain a sense of community found in a hospital setting. They realized that the newest high-tech piece of equipment or software wasn’t going to improve communication. But they figured out what would.

Read the full article now: Want to Engage Physicians? Listen to Them

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Matt Humphrey
President