The Burden of Outdated Communications Technologies in Healthcare

Outdated and insecure modes of communication like voicemail, fax, and postal mail place a burden on you, your clinic, and your patients.

In today’s day and age, people are difficult to reach over the phone. Personal voicemail is rarely checked, and going back and forth playing phone tag wastes staff time. Even if you are able to connect with patients over the phone, keeping track of the conversation thread over different contacts can be difficult, which leaves plenty of room for miscommunication and errors.

Fax machines are cumbersome, time-consuming, and deficient when it comes to team messaging and collaborative care. Just because a fax goes through, does not mean that the appropriate person has read it. Messages can get lost, misplaced, or can end up in the wrong hands due to simple misdials, or all-too-common fax server malfunctions. In the era of improved patient engagement, using this out-dated device also segregates patients out of the conversation about their health and creates a need for duplication.

Finally, when we consider all of the instant communication tools available to clinics today, communicating via mail on time-sensitive issues poses challenges. Not only is this method slow, expensive and labour intensive, but it also is incongruent with the digital lifestyles that most patients live today.

When was the last time you used a fax machine or typed (or wrote) and mailed a letter in your daily life? Yes, it’s important to engage patients, but these outdated communication methods are inefficient, inconvenient, disjointed, and expensive.

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