Performance Is the Key to the Delivery of Critical Alert Messaging
Performance is the key factor in the delivery of healthcare critical alert messaging. When you need fast, reliable message delivery as an essential element to maintaining patient safety, you need a response paging system. Only this communication medium delivers critical messages to one recipient or hundreds of recipients within 5 seconds. It does not matter what other traffic is happening with lower-priority users; a response paging system will still deliver critical messages within 5 seconds. And, response paging’s use of dedicated, high power digital 900MHz channels means that coverage is not a problem, thoroughly covering the entire hospital complex plus several miles beyond.
A response paging system delivers messages immediately, reliably and without delay. The same is not true with smartphones. With smartphones and SMS text messages, critical users share the same network with millions of commercial customers. Most of the time, a single smartphone message will get there in just a few seconds and a group will be completed in a few minutes … but from one to five percent of the messages may take longer, even hours, because of coverage, local congestion, or Internet availability. Do you want your critical alert messages queued behind Facebook updates, employee photo sharing, and YouTube. This is completely unacceptable in terms of patient safety.
A response paging system is always available and reliable because it is a completely self-contained. Its operational efficiency makes it an excellent solution for routine communications as well as critical communications. And, the costs for response a paging system as compared to cell or smart phones is by far the best value. A response paging system has very little recurring cost. In contrast, each cellular phone can cost $30/month or more, and a smart phone costs around $60/month. Battery life is another reliability factor. How many times has your cell phone been out of power? A response pager has an extremely long battery life. For performance, reliability, availability, simplicity of use, battery life and cost of acquisition and ongoing use, a response paging system wins hands down.