Vocera Communications Inc., a leader in clinical communication and workflow headquartered in San Jose, Calif., announced today McLaren Northern Michigan in Petoskey, part of Grand Blanc-based McLaren Health Care, has deployed Vocera solutions to connect care teams across the hospital, including its new 182,000-square-foot Offield Family Pavilion.
The new wing features 104 private inpatient rooms in a new intensive care unit (ICU), cardiovascular unit, and surgical unit and was partially funded by local donations.
“We are fortunate to have a caring and supportive community that enabled us to implement essential solutions and build a modern facility to match our world-class care,” says Jennifer Woods, chief nursing officer and vice president of patient care services at McLaren Northern Michigan. “Our clinicians and staff deserve the best tools and technologies.”
McLaren Northern Michigan nurses, physicians, and other care team members throughout the hospital are equipped with the Vocera Vina smartphone application and the wearable, voice controlled Vocera Smartbadge. The app and Smartbadge are activated with simple voice commands like “call 201 nurse,” or “call ICU pharmacist.”
The mobile solutions also enable team members to send and receive secure messages and easily manage alert and alarm notifications. The Vocera Engage intelligent workflow engine prioritizes and routes notifications with actionable information to the right clinician on their device of choice.
Care team members can also reach safety and security personnel instantly with the dedicated panic buttons on the Vocera Smartbadge and Spectralink Versity smartphone — an enterprise grade smartphone that ensures workers are constantly connected to the data they need — running the Vina app.
The hospital is also actively working to integrate the Vocera solutions with the hospital’s real time location system (RTLS), nurse call, physiologic monitors, digital whiteboards, electronic health record system, and smart beds to simplify workflows, reduce interruptions, mitigate cognitive overload, and speed up response times.
“Vocera provides an excellent platform for safe and efficient clinical communication and advanced integrated workflows,” says Shari Schult, vice president of operations at McLaren Northern Michigan. “We are very proud of the hospital we built and the many technologically advanced solutions we implemented to best serve our patients today and into the future.”
