The 532-bed hospital will be extending its communication capabilities through new smartphone solutions from Amcom Software. The hospital will be adding to its already-established Amcom database to increase communication speed and physician connectivity through smartphone applications and web-based on-call scheduling.

With a need for constant connection at the hospital, said Cathy Rammelsberg, St. Luke's Hospital's telecom supervisor, the disparate methods of traditional physician solutions were no longer an option.

"We've seen a lot of productivity with this," she said. "We get calls from all over the state looking for mental health beds and regular beds, and we're paging a lot to get a hold of the nurse or the person carrying that pager."

Amcom's vice president of marketing, Mike Devine, said the smartphone solutions reflect a changing face of public health  -  one that demands untethered, continuous contact. "Really, the mobility in healthcare is something that is staggering," he said. "Hospitals, in this day and age, are forced to do a lot more human resources, so they need a way to speed that communication, get in touch with each other, so the individuals will get that care faster."

Through Amcom's Smart Web technology, caregivers can be contacted through calls, pages and web messaging  -  all through a single system that's already integrated to the hospital's software database.

Company officials say 785 North American hospitals rely on Amcom's communication software, and 90 of those have adopted the critical smartphone technology.

"With Smart Web is a nice progressive use of technology that they're doing at St. Luke's," said Devine. If a doctor has to be paged, he or she can be called through an operator, messaged on a smartphone, or contacted via a webpage, he said. "It's a really simple way to provide critical messaging wherever you are."

Flexibility and fluidity in communication is crucial to St. Luke's, said Rammelsberg. The smartphone technology will be extended to the hospital's emergency department, where a medical emergency team demands swift contact "to get the patient in the hospital bed quickly," she said.

The software will also serve a behavioral health medical emergency team, as well as generate stroke alerts  -  because, as Rammelsberg said, "The faster they get people there to help with a potential stroke patient, the better."

The solutions will ensure security, too; Amcom Mobile Connect draws upon encrypted, HIPAA-compliant mobile messaging to connect caregivers, company officials said. Even after a smartphone has been lost or stolen, providers can protect patient data through remote message deletion options.

The Amcom smartphone technology will strengthen patient security, but also extend the provider-patient relationship at St. Luke's Hospital, said Devine.

"The caregivers are able to use their smartphones to key in data on electronic medical records. They can look up drug interactions and references," he said. "With these macro trends in healthcare, you need to show better patient satisfaction or better reimbursements. You've got to spend more time with the patients, and this is one way to do that."

The only roadblock cited by Rammelsberg and Devine in the software implementation process is working with the physician culture to break the tether of tradition. It's challenging "changing the way that people have done things for a long time," said Devine. "People are used to getting a beep on a pager and then picking up a phone. ... It's going to be a change."

But St. Luke's Hospital is readying itself for the shift, with an eye on bolstered patient care.

"Since 1996 we've worked with St. Luke's Hospital to develop and implement technology that truly makes a difference for patients and staff," said Chris Heim, president of Amcom Software. "We're lucky to continue this partnership and support their new initiatives for smartphone messaging and web-based on-call scheduling."