Executive Summary
Text messaging, known as SMS, has the potential to dramatically simplify and improve communications between staffing offices and their staff while reducing costs and improving business processes. This is accomplished by integrating text messaging into the current forms of voice communications. Using text communication allows the organization to more effectively control and manage their inbound and outbound communications concerning immediate staffing requirements.
Staffing offices use computers and calls to mobile phones for communications frequently. However, these two devices are used independent of each other. Computers in the staffing office are traditionally used for email, business processes and the Internet. Mobile phones are commonly used for voice communication. Over the past several years the features and functionality of mobile phones have expanded dramatically, which have put them on a level of a limited portable computer.
Computers and Internet access have limited availability outside the office environment and are only carried by mobile workers. Mobile phones, on the other hand, are carried by just about everyone. In some cases mobile phones are replacing personal land lines. Usually the staffing office has the mobile phone numbers of its staff members along with their land line numbers. When contacting a person, the trend nowadays is to first call their mobile phone, then call their land line. Today's society is always on the go and therefore, we assume the person we are trying to reach is mobile.
This report is a resource for staffing organizations, especially health care staffing organizations to immediately improve communications, increase their competitive edge, increase client satisfaction and implement emergency communications procedures while reducing operating expenses. This can be accomplished in less than 30 days with a low Total Cost of Ownership and high Return On Investment.
Introduction
Test Messaging, or SMS (Short Message Service), because of its very nature has unique advantages other non voice services do not have. It provides a very convenient method of sending small bits of information to and between mobile phone users. The reasons for the enormous popularity of SMS have been the fact that the mechanism of sending and receiving messages not only saves time but costs less as well. In many situations one is relatively more comfortable sending a text message rather than talking over the phone. However, it must be noted that the younger generation is getting the most out of this service. They have even come up with their own language for conversational text messaging.
The mobile phone carriers are in constant competition and are now offering text messaging services very inexpensively and many are moving towards making the service free. With this new direction the popularity of SMS is increasing further. SMS is also uniquely positioned as a very attractive advertisement medium. SMS is on its way to no longer being treated as a value added service in mobile networks; it is also providing a useful mechanism for a host of innovative applications over mobile networks. It is acting as a point of entry for new data services on mobile networks.
In this whitepaper we will address a more practical and beneficial use of text messaging for health care communications.
Brief History
Cell broadcast messaging is a mobile technology feature defined by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute. It is also known as SMS (Short Message Service). Cell broadcast is designed for simultaneous delivery of messages to multiple users. Whereas, the Short Message Service is a one-to-one and one-to-a-few service, cell broadcast is a one-to-many messaging service.
Cell broadcast messaging was technologically demonstrated in Paris for the first time in 1997. Some mobile carriers use cell broadcast for communicating to mobile phone users various information, such as, the area code of antenna cells.
If these two concepts were combined, the ability to broadcast in a one-to-many format using cell broadcast, and the ability to send messages in a one-to-one format using SMS, could be applied to many communications applications. In the U.S., most handsets do have text messaging capability, and all of the major carriers have deployed the technology in their networks.
Current State of the Healthcare Profession
A comprehensive study led by Jack Needleman of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and Peter Buerhaus of Vanderbilt University's School of Nursing in Nashville, Tennessee purport that the size and mix of nurse staffing in U.S. hospitals has a direct impact on the outcome of patient health. Their data was analyzed to determine staffing levels of registered nurses (RN), licensed practicing/vocational nurses (LPN/LVN), and aides, and to measure the frequency of a wide range of complications that patients developed during their hospital stay.
