By Kat Wilkerson, Content Marketing Specialist at Alertus Technologies

Hospitals and Healthcare facilities face a unique set of emergency notification challenges.

Alertus can help.

The Alertus Mass Notification System offers a variety of industry-leading emergency notification products — both visual and audible — to help you reach everyone in the event of an emergency or for routine communications. Tiffany Bates, Alertus’ Director of Healthcare Sales, has over 15 years of experience working within the healthcare industry. She is recognized for her resourcefulness, technical aptitude, and problem-solving skills to provide her clients with a first-class project experience.

To help you better facilitate organization-wide alerts when it matters most, Tiffany answered three questions about the importance of emergency notification systems within the healthcare industry.

Healthcare Sales and Industry Expert

Name: Tiffany Bates
Title: Director of Healthcare Sales
Organization: Alertus Technologies

What are the healthcare industry's top challenges regarding mass notification?

The healthcare industry and hospital emergency management face several challenges regarding mass notification. One of the biggest challenges is the wide variety of events that can trigger the need for emergency mass notification, including hospital emergency codes (or Color Codes) for:

• Medical Emergencies 

• Fire

• Weather Emergencies

• Hazardous Material or Spill Incidents

• Active Shooters

• Infant Abduction

• Catastrophic Event with Mass Casualties 

Additionally, IT outages commonly need to be communicated. 

Since the footprint of a healthcare organization can range from a single building or a large campus with multiple buildings to a network of satellite clinics with numerous hospitals, healthcare organizations also have the unique challenge of trying to avoid "notification fatigue." When you overwhelm users with multiple irrelevant messages, they become desensitized to all emergency notifications and are more likely to miss relevant alerts. To combat “notification fatigue,” it’s essential only to target affected users, device groups, or locations to receive relevant notifications.

Ensuring users can receive notifications no matter where they are or what they are doing is another common challenge in healthcare organizations. Healthcare providers often don't have time to check emails or text messages while treating patients; therefore, these crisis communication strategies are not optimal in this environment. Contrary to receiving notifications in healthcare is initiating an activation and calling for assistance while actively treating or transiting patients.

How can healthcare organizations overcome these challenges?

Healthcare organizations can overcome these challenges by selecting flexible and scalable solutions to leverage their existing systems and network assets to notify all users during an emergency. It's essential to employ a multi-layered approach to a mass notification system to ensure the organization can reach all users while maintaining notification relevance.

What Alertus product developments have helped improve/enhance the healthcare industry’s approach to mass notification the most in the last year?

For years, Alertus has offered healthcare organizations a robust portfolio of mass notification solutions with dynamic targeting based on user groups, device groups, location, or IP range, including Desktop Notification, VoIP notification, Digital Signage, and Cable TV Override, indoor/outdoor Text-to-Speech speaker/horn capabilities, FACP Interface, and digital PA system integration.

The latest version of the Alertus Mobile App Suite complements the Alertus solution by extending healthcare organizations' ability to reach their staff who travel between locations and after hours in the event of mass casualty/catastrophic events that require increased staffing. The new WiFi panic button solution provides a "wearable" panic button option to allow healthcare providers to call for help during an emergency and includes a WiFi Access Point to determine the user's location for faster response times. Additionally, this new device can be attached to a security badge or a lanyard, so the user always has it within reach.

To further explore our Healthcare solutions, click here.

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Best Practices in Emergency Communication for Healthcare

During an emergency, it is critical to get information out in a timely and reliable manner. Watch this on-demand webinar and learn how Alertus can enhance your emergency communication strategy for your healthcare organization.