Sioux Falls nurse helped Avera Health abandon using pagers
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — Pagers might still beep at the hips of TV show doctors, but they have no place at Avera Health.
The way doctors and nurses communicate at Avera is different.
It’s more comprehensive. More connected to Avera’s other communication networks. And it’s far more appropriate given the capabilities of modern technology and the life-and-death scenarios that play out daily in clinics and hospitals.
Avera’s evolution beyond beepers might not seem like a major step, but it’s a departure from an industry that still by and large relies on the 1960s technology.
For Candice Friestad, it was more about helping the nurses. They were being overwhelmed by pagers and giant wireless phones. She wanted an alternative that wouldn’t make them feel like “Tim ‘The Tool Man’ Taylor,” Friestad said.
“The nurses came up to us and said, ‘stop this,’” said Friestad, who worked as a nurse in Avera’s critical care units for 17 years.
Friestad led the charge when Avera first made the switch in 2014 from Motorola alphanumeric pagers to smartphones and agreed to sign a contract with Voalte, a growing medical technology company out of Sarasota, Florida.
She dumped the beepers into boxes and orchestrated a technological evolution across the hospital system, departing from an industry norm with a gusto that only comes with a clear sense of purpose.
Friestad knew it would be better for patients.
Her vision for the future earned her a special nod from Voalte. The company named her “Innovator of the Year” in October at its 2018 user conference in Sarasota.
“Our entire customer base has benefited from her hard work,” Oscar Callejas, co-founder and vice president of services for Voalte. “Anybody that’s around her is just totally captivated by her and they immediately get the vision.”
Nearly 8 in 10 clinicians in the United States still use pagers for patient carerelated communication, according to a 2017 report in the Journal of Hospital Medicine.
Hospitals resist change because it comes with the upfront costs of installing a new telecommunications network, throwing away already paid-for pagers and buying enough smartphones to equip the entire staff of providers, Friestad told the Argus Leader .
When she first started looking for an alternative, Voalte was one of a few tech firms creating software for using smartphones in patient care-related communication.
Voalte offered three things she was looking for: encrypted security, a variety of alarms and something that would work on any device — iPhones or Android, Friestad said.
Voalte founder and CEO Trey Lauderdale was working in health care tech for Emergin when he first realized the potential benefits smartphones to patient carerelated communication.
“He saw the frustration from the nurses first hand,” Callejas said. “They were saying ’why is it we’ve got all this sophisticated equipment that can save lives and do all of these really advanced things but at the end the day, the output is the pager.”
Instead of relying on one-way beeper and the availability of a phone on both ends, doctors can communicate instantly with a team of providers by using text messages and file sharing. Friestad heard of one instance where providers shared a photo of a patient’s heart monitor reading and then immediately took action to save the person’s life.
“All I have to do is go for the patient, pull them up by name or by room number and then I see, oh here’s the nurse who’s caring for this person or the pharmacist,” Friestad said.
Friestad digs through her desk, looking for an old Avera beeper.
“At one point I had saved them as a relic,” she said. “As in, ‘oh, this used to be a pager.’”
Friestad speaks with a no-frills authenticity, softened by a dry sense of humor.
She jokes about the floral-pattern couch across from her desk — a secondhand piece of furniture she inherited from a retired physician and now feels obligated to keep. She tells a story about bringing the Voalte award through airport security, how its pointy top drew extra attention from TSA. KILLINGTON, Vt. (AP) — The Green Mountain Club says it is now offering digital trail maps that people can purchase, download and view on a mobile phone.
GMC’s Operations and Publications Coordinator Matt Krebs showed off the new technology on a trail near Killington. He tells Vermont Public Radio that users can take photos and add them on to the digital maps to customize them.
The new Green Mountain Club digital map program shows trails and shelters and water sources, just like a paper map. It even works when cell service isn’t available by using GPS technology.
Krebs says it could be a way to encourage more people to get out into the woods and onto trails. But he also says people should always carry a physical map and compass when hiking.