In the first month, 70% of eligible users were active and over 45,000 messages were sent
46 different on-call schedules were imported and managed; all on one digital platform as source of truth
Improved collaboration and communication between provides through secure messaging
“We definitely wanted something that was implemented in other hospitals that could meet the privacy and security requirements that we had at the time. Hypercare immediately checked all the boxes from a functionality perspective.”
Steve Volpini
Chief Information & Privacy Officer
Health Sciences North (HSN) is the regional hospital for Northeastern Ontario and a leading academic health sciences centre in Canada. As the tertiary care centre with 25 sites across the region, they provide critical and inpatient care for more than half a million people across a variety of services and programs including cardiac care, oncology, nephrology, trauma and rehabilitation. HSN employs close to 4500 staff and offers a variety of programs and services, with regional programs in the areas of cardiac care, oncology, nephrology, trauma and rehabilitation.
Prior to implementing Hypercare, HSN struggled with finding the on-call provider for medical services and switchboard staffing. This led HSN to contract to an external switchboard service to help support their existing operations. The external service filled a crucial need, however it resulted in additional complexity to reach on-call providers, and added a significant expense. Furthermore, HSN was also relying on antiquated pagers to connect which often caused longer cycles to connect and telephone tag.
“We joke here at HSN how we were cups and strings. It was the old, antiquated software, the system, the way we did things. And Hypercare brought us up to speed with everyone else.” - David Joslin, Switchboard Supervisor
In addition to the connection concerns, the hospital was using an in-house on-call scheduling system that required each department to send their schedule to the switchboard every week. It became very complicated to manage last minute changes to the schedule, resulting in errors and occasionally the wrong person getting paged.
“I think the first part really was just trying to actually hunt down people and be able to actually hunt down the right person. [There were] too many mistakes, too many barriers, too many missed calls, people getting woken up in the middle of the night.” - Dr. Tyler Christie, Chief Medical Information Officer, Emergency Physician
Lastly, prior to Hypercare there was no standardized method of communication between staff. This resulted in a lot of phone tag, frustration and general inefficiencies in staff communication.
While the team at HSN identified a need to move away from the external switchboard provider, they also saw several other opportunities. This included:
Hospital leadership decided on finding a tool to tackle the issues mentioned above, and acted with a sense of urgency as they wanted it in place prior to transitioning their EHR to Meditech, planned for 2024. After an internal evaluation with multiple vendors, the hospital chose Hypercare as the tool that could meet its specific requirements and aggressive deployment deadline.
“We definitely wanted something that was implemented in other hospitals that could meet the privacy and security requirements that we had at the time. Hypercare immediately checked all the boxes from a functionality perspective.” - Steve Volpini, Chief Information & Privacy Officer
Following a successful Hypercare pilot with the Emergency Department, HSN leadership initiated a rapid rollout across all teams in a short period of time, with approximately 3 months of pre-planning (updating processes and determining scope) and a 1-week training program administered by Hypercare. Given the scale and complexity of the implementation and the various stakeholders involved, the Hypercare team traveled to Sudbury, ON to meet with hospital staff and onboard providers to the platform in person.
“Working with Hypercare was great. You set a bar pretty high for vendors” - Anna Grigull, Director of Medical Affairs
Over the course of a week, the Hypercare team provided hands-on training to 2,000 users. The response from the staff at HSN was overwhelmingly positive, specifically as it relates to working with the Hypercare team.
“We could really rely on the Hypercare team to fill in those knowledge gaps that we obviously didn't have at the beginning of the project” - Lindsay Cooper, Digital Health Project Manager
The positive feedback from the HSN team was clear; the team loved the application and was able to hit the ground running and use it as expected. Within the first month of implementation, 70% of eligible users were active, over 45,000 messages were sent, and 46 different on-call schedules were imported and managed through Hypercare.
“I personally love Hypercare. It's made our life so much easier. It's in my pocket. I page doctors walking up and down the hallway and have instant answers. Our day-to-day at the hospital is so much better.” - Sarah Schroeder, Nurse Clinician
The adoption of Hypercare has enhanced provider satisfaction and improved communication efficiency. Clinicians are now able to contact their colleagues more easily, and get a response much quicker, eliminating previous barriers in communication.
“You can win any day telling an emergency doctor that they will be faster and more efficient at what they do. It [Hypercare] has proven to do exactly that” - Dr. Dominique Ansell, Chief of the Emergency Department, Emergency Medicine Physician
Future directions with Hypercare include expanding outwards with their community partners and potentially through affiliate hospital systems to facilitate even more seamless communication for patient care.
