Success With Clinical Communications Tools Depends on Vendor Support, Ease of Integration, KLAS Report Finds

As health systems increasingly adopt technology to enhance clinical communication, the selection of the right vendor can make or break their efforts to improve efficiency, reduce miscommunication, and enhance clinician satisfaction. The KLAS report “Clinical Communications 2024: Which Vendors Best Support Solution Adoption Enterprise-Wide?” provides an overview of vendors in the space and their ability to support enterprise-wide adoption.

The State of Clinical Communications in 2024

Health systems face significant pressure to streamline communication across their organizations. Ultimately, the goal is to ensure HIPAA compliance, improve response times, reduce alert fatigue, and foster better coordination among care teams. Despite these objectives, many organizations struggle to adopt clinical communication solutions across their enterprises.

The report emphasizes that successful enterprise-wide adoption hinges on three factors:

1. The breadth of a vendor’s offerings.
2. The ease of deploying and integrating modules.
3. The quality of ongoing vendor support.

Vendors that excel in these areas help organizations achieve better communication workflows, more timely exchanges of information, and improved care coordination.

Vendor Performance and Adoption Insights

According to the report, PerfectServe Telmediq leads the market in enterprise adoption, with acute care customers utilizing over five key modules or third-party integrations on average. The report stated, “PerfectServe Telmediq customers most consistently report being able to find and loop in broader care teams through real-time intelligence from physician schedules.” This capability enhances care delivery by ensuring that the right provider is contacted at the right time.

Other notable performers include TigerConnect and symplr. Both are praised for their straightforward deployments and intuitive interfaces. Their ease of use enables healthcare organizations to adopt these platforms quickly and break down traditional communication barriers.

Epic offers value through its robust implementation model. Epic’s Secure Chat, a native part of its EHR package, provides a seamless way for care teams to communicate without the need for additional investments in standalone messaging platforms. The report highlighted Epic’s integration with existing systems, allowing IT teams to build expertise and optimize platform usage internally.

Challenges to Enterprise-Wide Adoption

While clinical communication solutions hold great promise, organizations face several hurdles when implementing these tools at scale. The report identifies the following key challenges:

1. End-User Training and Adoption: The lack of effective training is a significant barrier to adoption. According to the report, “Lack of training and integration are the most frequently reported challenges to enterprise communications strategies.” Without proper onboarding and continuous education, clinicians and staff often underutilize the platforms, undermining their potential benefits.
2. Integration Complexities: Ensuring that communication tools work seamlessly with existing systems, particularly EHRs, remains a significant challenge. Vendors that cannot provide easy integrations risk slowing adoption and diminishing the system’s overall value.
3. Scalability and Cost Management: Scaling these solutions across an entire health system can be financially and operationally taxing. Many respondents cited cost as a major factor limiting their ability to expand solutions enterprise-wide.
4. Vendor Support: The report highlighted disparities in vendor support, with some vendors struggling to provide the proactive guidance necessary to help organizations optimize their solutions. Customers of vendors like PerfectServe Telmediq appreciated the hands-on approach of their customer success managers (CSMs).

Vendor-Specific Insights

• PerfectServe Telmediq: Leads in enterprise-wide adoption, thanks to its comprehensive support, proactive CSMs, and ability to optimize physician scheduling—a key component of effective communication workflows.
• TigerConnect and symplr: Praised for their simplicity and ease of use, these vendors enable quicker adoption and focus on fostering collaboration within and across care teams.
• Epic: Offers a robust implementation model with its Secure Chat solution, which integrates seamlessly into existing workflows, reducing the need for external tools and additional costs.

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