By Laura Waterton
One simple way to help protect patients and healthcare practitioners - from GP surgeries to pharmacies to hospitals - is to record your telephone conversations.
In the UK, it’s considered NHS best practice. In the United States, this is a formal requirement under HIPAA legislation.
Recording your calls puts your patients first.
Recording playlists are a great way to train new staff how to handle common and complex call scenarios. Supervisors can also use Quality Measurement tools to regularly check that their team are meeting quality of care standards.
Recording patient calls can also help capture key information, such as changes to patient contact details, circumstances or requests, to speed up services or changes to medical advice.
An expensive lawsuit is painful for everyone, impacting the patient and their family, the time and reputation of the healthcare provider, and diverting vital resources from the already stretched NHS.
Recording your calls helps avoid worst case scenarios in the first place.
At a fundamental level, recording your calls encourages both parties to pay attention to what they say on the phone, deterring fraudsters and capturing any poor behaviour.
Errors can be avoided by playing back calls to check prescriptions and information and queried if necessary.
Misunderstandings can be cleared up more quickly by simply checking what was said on a call and identifying where any error was made or if service was below standard.
If a dispute does escalate, encrypted call recordings can provide vital evidence in a court of law. This can help protect the healthcare provider from prosecution, or in some cases provide a body of evidence surrounding dangerous malpractice.
Of course, patient information must be kept securely and only available on a need-to-know basis.
Look for a call recorder that provides encryption to prevent tampering with records, and also includes role-based access and reporting so only those with authority can manage the recordings.
If a recording needs to be shared with a third party for reasons such as service provision or safeguarding, consider using a solution that offers in-app linking to that specific recording or even just the relevant part of it, rather than downloading insecure MP3 files where possible.
Secure storage should be a no brainer, so consider where your recordings will be kept – if that’s in the cloud, it should be both secure and private. If HIPAA affects your organization, then you need to store recordings for 10 years, possibly longer if there’s an ongoing investigation.
ClarifyGo is a cloud recording platform for Microsoft Teams. Designed to support regulatory compliance including HIPAA, GDPR and the CMS Final Rule, it will help you improve your quality of care as well as protect you, your patients and the wider community from the impact of mistakes, disputes and abuse.
For more information or to arrange a demo, email sales@oakinnovate.com
