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Nebraska Hospitals provide family and friends with real-time electronic updates

HIPAA Weekly Advisor, July 23, 2007

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Omaha's Methodist Hospital is yet another Nebraska hospital adopting technology in order to offer a more customer-service oriented experience for patients' friends and family. The hospital will soon be installing screens-similar to those found in airports-in waiting rooms and cafeterias, and the screens will then broadcast real-time electronic updates on patients' status, according to the World-Herald. Patients and their families will receive ID numbers, and the screens then display the ID numbers with updates, such as when the patient enters surgery, returns to his or her hospital room, or is ready to leave the hospital.

Other hospitals in Omaha have already adopted other technological techniques of keeping families and friends up to date on a patient's status. Several have adopted pagers that show text message updates, and others have pagers that simply alert families when they can visit an information desk to receive updated information, says the World-Herald.

The newly adopted screens and pagers may also reduce the number of incidental PHI disclosures that often occur in waiting rooms. Unfortunately, a lack of available space at many facilities has traditionally meant that hospital staff members provided updates to families and friends within earshot of others in crowded public spaces.

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