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Smartphones in Long Term Care - When?

4/5/2018

We’ve all heard the story. A young nurse brings a smartphone to work. They snap a selfie to share with friends on Facebook, but don’t see the resident sitting in the background. HIPPA laws busted.

Directors at LTC facilities will often site this example, or explain how distracting they are to the staff. Texting friends, checking social feeds, email, and many of the other tasks we perform on our personal phones have nothing to do with work. IT professionals can get away with it sitting at their cubicle, but nurses don’t have the luxury. It’s a demanding job, demanding their full attention.

The simple solution for most Directors is to not allow phones. Or is it?

We’ve encountered this a lot when speaking with nursing homes about upBed and technology like it. When we say “sends a text message to your phone”, there is good that this causes problems. We get responses like…

“We don’t allow phones.”
“It’s something we’re looking at in the future.”
“Can you work with a paging system?”

To get around this we offer phones specifically for our app that are low end so no-one would want to do much else with them. This seems OK, but it begs the question. When will it become common for nursing homes to use mobile devices?

Some do. They provide a phone to the head nurse to contact doctors, or tablets to staff for charting. A very few allow personal phones with general etiquette on how and when to use them. But these are a dime a dozen, at least in Maine.

Being new to healthcare, I'm interested in what you think? What’s holding facilities back the most? Will it ever be common? Or worse, how much longer will these pagers exist?

Please don't make me write code to talk to your pager. I'll do it, but please!

5 Comments

Donna B

4/5/2018 10:21:11 am

We're not allowed to use phones. It's annoying sometimes you just want to look something up for someone. I think it will change but I don't think it will be personal phones but some kind of work phone. --Donna

Julie

4/6/2018 05:56:27 am

I think that mobile devices will become necessary and useful. That being said, I do not believe staff should have personal mobile devices and use them for patient/resident purposes. I believe facilities should consider replacing pagers with mobile devices. EMR software is progressing in LTC and mobile apps are becoming available.

Aron Semle link

4/9/2018 07:32:42 am

Julie, great point on EMR software. It does seem like this is starting to take hold in LTC and it might be a good way to usher in mobiles devices as well.

Howard L. Pearl link

4/9/2018 07:05:06 am

Hipaa was designed to protect privacy, but much of it is overkill. An aide posting a picture with a patient is probably going to do more good than harm. We are in a new world of technology and we need to reevaluate where privacy fits in.

Staff abuse of cell phones will occur, but, if controlled, may turn into a positive. The easiest way, i.e. to ban, is not always the best.

(Patients cannot keep smartphones because, unfortunately, they will disappear. There is no place to lock them up at night. )

4/9/2018 07:35:16 am

Howard, that's a really interesting point. Being new to healthcare/HIPPA, I have had the thought that maybe it is a bit much at times. Is this conversation happening anywhere that you know of?

Smartphones in Long Term Care - When?

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