By nature, healthcare is an always-on industry. Your employees—no matter what their roles—have a lot on their plates. From direct patient care to administrative duties, every detail matters. With so much information flying around the facility, communication can be difficult. You can’t afford for something to slip through the cracks because your patients are counting on you, so how do you bridge the gaps to ensure no important information is missed?
It’s all about employing today’s technology in a way that works for your employees. Certain software solutions are specifically intended to increase communications and put everyone on the same page. Text messaging, of course, is at the top of this list.
Here’s why:
1. People Actually Pay Attention to Text Messages
This one makes the top of the list for obvious reasons. If you’re trying to improve communications within your organization, it’s important to use a tool that facilitates this process. Your staff has their phones at their fingertips constantly, meaning they can easily access anything you’re trying to tell them. Face-to-face meetings are important, but a lot of details can be forgotten when you’re simply having a verbal conversation. Emails can be a good secondary method of follow-up, but busy people can often overlook emails or put off reading them until it’s too late. Text messages, on the other hand, are read within five seconds of being received, on average.
Put the power of your organization’s messages into your employees’ hands if you want them to take notice. Your messages will be read by your employees.
2. SMS Deter Overwhelming Amounts of Information
Phone calls and emails can easily lend themselves to an overabundance of information. If your employees open an email and see a huge block of text, they may flag it to read at a later time (which might never come). Text messaging forces you to think differently about the messages you’re sending. By creating clear, concise statements that are specifically relevant to the point at hand, your employees can easily read your texts and extract the important information without feeling overwhelmed.
Send text messages to get your point across in a straightforward manner.
3. Texting Make Shift Changes Easier
You have an ample number of doctors, nurses, and admin staff, working various shifts every day. If someone needs to swap shifts or call in sick, how do you ensure the rest of the staff is aware of the changes?
Text messaging allows you to automate employee shift scheduling, eliminating the need for old-school spreadsheets and whiteboards that simply don’t work. Traditional methods of scheduling leave a lot to be desired, keeping key team members out of the loop if something changes on their off days. Text messaging, however, enables everyone to see when a colleague isn’t able to come to work at a moment’s notice, allowing others to jump in and fill the voids without any disruption to the normal workflow.
Putting your patients’ needs is at the forefront of your organization’s goals; text messaging will help ensure every slot is filled, even when team members can’t come to work.
Author Biography:
Joel Lee
Joel Lee is the SEO marketing specialist at Trumpia, which earned a reputation as the most complete SMS solution including user-friendly user interface and API for mobile engagement, Smart Targeting, advanced automation, enterprise, and cross-channel features for both mass texting and landline texting use cases.
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