Texas Hospital Chooses Communication System

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — In an effort to improve coordination and reduce medical errors caused by communication breakdowns, the San Jacinto Methodist Hospital (SJMH) in Baytown, Texas, will deploy a new PerfectServe clinical communication and information delivery platform system in early 2012.

“PerfectServe’s ability to simplify and standardize communication between physicians and members of our nursing, pharmacy, and ancillary support teams will help us improve quality of patient care,” said Donna Gares, the hospital’s president and chief executive officer. “It will also speed medical communications between physician colleagues, especially when doctors need to reach busy consultants to discuss a patient’s care.”

Knoxville, Tenn.-based PerfectServe’s services enable anyone with patient care responsibilities at the facility to quickly connect with any medical staff inside or outside of the hospital by dialing a single number, or via a single Web portal or mobile application.

Information is routed automatically to the right doctor, in the right way, according to each physician’s precise instructions for every moment of every day, a company statement said.

“We designed PerfectServe to make the practice of medicine simpler by allowing doctors to selectively filter and control the clinical communications they receive,” said Terry Edwards, PerfectServe’s president and CEO. “Clinical communication and information flows more accurately, because PerfectServe assembles and maintains all of the workflow rules, call schedules, and contact preferences for every physician on staff.”

SJMH is PerfectServe’s first deployment within The Methodist Hospital System, which includes the Texas Medical Center and four community hospitals serving the greater Houston area.

“We expect PerfectServe will allow us to recover valuable nursing time by making it possible for clinicians to reach the right physician quicker and with less hassle,” said Bruce Kennedy, chief medical officer at SJMH. “It will help give nurses and doctors more time with patients, while removing a key source of physician dissatisfaction with the hospital’s current call system.”