Disrupting Nurse Call

Change is disrupting nurse call. After decades of slow incremental change, the pace of change is quickening. These changes impact provider organizations and manufacturers as nurse call is integrated with adjacent market point of care solutions and new technologies. The benefits will be substantial: improved HCAHPS scores, improved patient safety, shorter length of stay and greater staff productivity. Lagging providers and manufacturers will miss out on the benefits of these new capabilities. Let's look at the recent past of the nurse call market and where we might be going in 2019 and beyond.

In this post we'll look at structural elements of the market that are disrupting nurse call and why, and delve into examples of these changes. We'll close with a bit of analysis and prognosticate what might be coming next.

Barriers to Change

Let's start with factors that have fostered the relative stability enjoyed by nurse call vendors for about the past 50 years — the original hospital "sound and communications systems" were founded in the 1960's and 1970's.

Regulatory Barriers

Any new entrants to the nurse call business must overcome a regulatory barrier. In 1977, nurse call manufacturers and the Underwriters Laboratories got together and created the UL1069 standard for Hospital Signaling and Nurse Call Equipment. Not long after, states started to require every hospital patient room include a UL1069 certified nurse call system in order to be licensed.

The mandatin...

Source: Medical Connectivity Consulting - June 7, 2019 Category: Information Technology Authors: Tim Gee Tags: Nurse Call Strategy & Planning Source Type: blogs