Vocada Introduces New CTRM Solution -- Veriphy; VoiceLink's Successor Makes Debut as Market Leader
Vocada, Inc. this week introduced Veriphy™, a comprehensive, technology-based solution for Critical Test Result Management (CTRM) -- an enterprise strategy for enhancing patient safety, improving patient outcomes, and boosting staff productivity at hospitals. Vocada made the announcement at the annual meeting of The American Healthcare Radiology Administrators, being held this week in Las Vegas. Vocada’s first product, VoiceLink™ has led the market for CTRM ever since it was introduced in 2004. Vocada’s CTRM customer base now includes more than 80 hospitals across the country, and the company is adding new ones at a rapid clip.
Las Vegas, NV (PRWEB) July 31, 2006
Vocada, Inc. this week introduced Veriphy™, a comprehensive, technology-based solution for Critical Test Result Management (CTRM) -- an enterprise strategy for enhancing patient safety, improving patient outcomes, and boosting staff productivity at hospitals.
Vocada made the announcement at the annual meeting of The American Healthcare Radiology Administrators, being held in Las Vegas this week.
Vocada’s first product, VoiceLink™ has led the market for CTRM ever since it was introduced in 2004. Vocada’s CTRM customer base now includes more than 80 hospitals across the country, and the company is adding new ones at a rapid clip.
Veriphy, the successor to VoiceLink, is much more than a technology platform, said Peter White, CEO of Vocada. He explained that Veriphy is a complete, end-to-end CTRM solution for hospital diagnostic departments, including radiology, laboratories, and cardiology.
The comprehensive Veriphy solution encompasses:
1. Policy development and implementation, including building of the physician database. This process ensures that rules and policies are consistent and appropriate, and eliminates potential barriers to a smooth implementation.
2. Communications technology that verifies message receipt and automates documentation and rule compliance – user-friendly, hosted technology that requires no new investment in hardware or software. A reporting clinician makes one call from a phone or computer and the system does the rest.
3. Real-time reporting that enables benchmarking and performance evaluation. By logging on to the Veriphy web site, a hospital administrator can quickly see whether patients might be at risk from delays in communicating critical patient findings.
4. Professional services to help implement best practices. Hospitals benefit from the experience of comparable institutions and avoid having to re-invent the wheel.
One of the new features in Veriphy is a downloadable desktop application, which enables a reporting clinician to create and send a voice message about a test result directly from his or her computer to the ordering clinician. The system automatically tracks and monitors the communication and verifies receipt of the message. Vocada describes the feature as “work-flow friendly.”
Veriphy also features a new web interface to make CTRM even easier for hospital administrators and department managers.
“CTRM for the first time provides hospital administrators with a window on a crucial facet of patient care and quality,” said Peter White. “With a click of a computer mouse, an administrator can spot problems and initiate corrective action. Without CTRM, a hospital administrator has no systematic way of knowing whether a problem exists and whether patients are at risk.”
Failures and delays in the communication of critical test results is the Achilles’ Heel of health care delivery. The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations and the National Institute of Medicine have identified these types of communication problems as a threat to patient safety. JCAHO’s National Patient Safety Goals specifically address the issue.
Radiology receives much of the attention as a source of the problem, but, in fact, every diagnostic department faces potential liability from this issue.
The Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988 also specifically address the problem. For example, CLIA Sec. 493.1234 Standard: Communications states:
The laboratory must have a system in place to identify and document problems that occur as a result of a breakdown in communication between the laboratory and an authorized individual who orders or receives test results.
Even where hospitals and laboratories genuinely believe they have addressed the problem, the reality often is very different. The typical “systems” for delivering and managing critical test results are mostly manual, disjointed, inefficient, prone to error, and frustratingly inconsistent across hospitals within a system and across diagnostic departments within a hospital.
“The essence of Veriphy is verified physician communications,” said Thomas White, executive vice president and co-founder of Vocada. “It is easy to use and adapts to fit the working preferences of most physicians. The automation features ensure reporting consistency within departments, across diagnostic departments, and across hospital systems.”
To report a critical patient finding to an ordering clinician, the reporting clinician calls an assigned Veriphy phone number once, speaks the report, and Veriphy literally does the rest. A clinician also can use the desktop feature to send an alert and voice message directly from the reporting clinician’s computer.
The automated system ensures compliance with all legal and professional reporting standards without any additional effort on the part of physicians or administrators.
Veriphy works equally well as a stand-alone application or embedded within other applications. With that in mind, Vocada has established strategic alliances with leading health care technology companies to provide the most comprehensive solution available for closed-loop medical communications.
CTRM technology did not even exist until relatively recently. Now that CTRM technology is here, it has changed the picture forever, said Tom White.
“With this technology-based solution, CTRM is not only possible, it now is mandatory for hospitals of all types and sizes,” he said.
About Vocada, Inc.
Vocada’s Veriphy™ critical test result management solution is the only end-to-end enterprise solution for communicating critical test results from hospital diagnostic departments to ordering clinicians. Using a patented, hosted system, Veriphy automates and verifies communication of critical test results in a real-time, assured and trackable solution, simultaneously enhancing patient safety and boosting physician productivity. The privately held, Dallas-based company was founded in October 2000 by brothers Peter and Thomas White, who were both previously involved with other innovative and successful technology ventures. The company introduced its first product, VoiceLink™, predecessor to Veriphy, in 2004. For more information, visit http://www. vocada. com/ (http://www. vocada. com/).
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