Bringing cloud-based software to healthcare hasn’t been an entirely smooth process, despite the federal government’s massive investment in EHR and EMR technology. In a recent interview with Bob Wachter, a physician and professor of medicine at the University of California, Dr. Wachter cited a “short-term hump period”, red tape, localization, extensive user testing (or rather a lack thereof), and a complex diversity of user roles as contributing factors to the notable lag between the advancement and adoption of new software in the field of medicine vs other industries.

Added to these issues is the challenge of application downtime, which can be particularly troublesome when tools designed to “seamlessly integrate” with your EHRS go down or even just experience minor performance problems.

Measuring Uptime Status for Hospital Management Systems

Using a status page can keep your team informed in two ways about what software and device integrations are experiencing normal uptime and which require attention from IT or from your medical technology vendor. First, having a centralized status page to track the uptime status of the various devices and integrations your hospital relies upon makes it as easy as one quick glance to confirm that everything is operating normally. Second, a status page can broadcast changes in uptime status to subscribed staff, via their preferred communication method.

Broadcasted changes in uptime status can be organized by software component or hardware device, so that only the relevant staff receive the notification. The status page can also be programmed to send notifications immediately, on a delay, or pending manual approval – so minor issues won’t trigger false alarms and create alert burnout.

Your Status Page as a Communications Bridge and Log

By connecting the systems already built in to monitor your software and hardware with a status page tool like StatusCast, you are bridging the gap between tech-savvy staff and non-tech-savvy staff. StatusCast broadcasts changes in uptime status to administrative staff and others, who have a stake in knowing what software and devices are up and running and which are experiencing problems- but are not the ones who actually need to know the technical details of the problem, as they will not be the ones troubleshooting the fix to the problem.

Once the issue is repaired and uptime status is restored, subscribed staff will also receive a notification informing them that everything is back to 100%, tightening the communication loop further (and providing documentation of the frequency, duration and severity of incidents, should a more serious conversation with a vendor be necessary).