Guthrie was selected as this year’s Spok Innovation Award winner for the inventive way it is delivering periodic updates to patients’ families during lengthy surgical procedures. Family members at Guthrie Robert Packer Hospital in Sayre, Pa. are given a tablet loaded with the Spok Mobile® secure texting app in the waiting room, and Guthrie’s operating room nurses send them timely updates about the patient’s care and progress. Nurses launch these messages from any computer in the hospital via Guthrie’s Spok web directory, which delivers messages to a variety of endpoints, such as pagers, wireless IP phones, smartphones, and in this case, tablets.
“Guthrie’s Surgical Services team came to me for help with improving their patient satisfaction scores, emphasizing family communication as a primary focus,” said Tonya Barnett in the telecommunications department at Guthrie Robert Packer Hospital. “We’ve had very positive feedback from patients and their families, as they can easily look back at past messages and have the information and timestamps they need to pass along to other family and friends.”
The tablets are also loaded with news, games, and social media apps to pass the time while families wait for news about their loved one. Nurses can also let families know when it’s a good time to step out for a walk or to get a bite to eat, which helps them manage their time and ease anxiety. The feedback from patients and their families has been so positive for Guthrie Surgical Services that the health system is currently looking to roll the program out to other areas of the hospital.
“It’s difficult to be in a waiting room and wonder how a friend or loved one is doing during a surgical procedure,’” said Hemant Goel, president of Spok. “We commend Guthrie for their creative approach to bridging the information sharing between the operating room and the waiting room to keep patients’ families informed of the care their loved one is receiving.”
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