When seeking for the methods of improving the coordination ealthcare, one should look specifically for the presence of options for improving communication. As innovative communication and information-management-related technologies emerged, the opportunities for improving healthcare increased significantly. Currently, health IT applications as the most advanced tool that can potentially be used for enhancing patient education through patient-nurse communication and, thus, the coordination of care, deserves a closer look.
Health IT applications offer an extensive range of options for patients that have limited access to care. Moreover, the tools such as mHealth can offer consistency in communication with a nurse, which means better information processing and improved patient education. mHealth tools as one of the health IT applications currently used in hospitals will also improve the speed and quality of nurses’ responses, not to mention the opportunity to spot an emerging problem and address it before it reaches an unmanageable scale (Dixon et al. 524). Moreover, the options for secure messaging and transfer of personal health-related data will allow patients to feel more secure, which will contribute to faster recovery.
By introducing the health IT application tools into the nursing context, one can reinforce the process of patient-nurse communication, which will result in the enhancement of the coordination of care. Namely, with better feedback received from patients, nurses will be able to address emergent health problems faster. Moreover, the use of the specified applications will allow for more effective diffusion of information across the team of nurses, which will lead to improved patient handoffs and other types of data transfer. Thus, health IT applications should be seen as a necessary addition to the current list of methods of healthcare coordination.
References
Dixon, Brian E., et al. “Information Technologies That Facilitate Care Coordination: Provider and Patient Perspectives.” Translational Behavioral Medicine, vol. 8, no. 3, 2018, pp. 522-525.