The Secret Cost of Pagers

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word ‘pager?’ For most people its either the ’90s or doctors. Which to me, feels like an oxymoron. A decades old device mixed with an industry based on innovation? It’s a recipe for disaster.

Yet somehow, pagers still accompany doctors on their daily rounds. And while there are plenty of supposed “reasons” why, most of them don’t hold up, especially now. Let’s unpack a few of the biggest misconceptions keeping this legacy tech on life support.

Pager Misconception #1 – Pagers Don’t Have Dead Zones

Pagers keep their spot on care teams mainly because of concerns with dead zones in healthcare facilities. The low frequencies can penetrate through walls that cell phones just can’t. So, I understand this concern, I really do.

However, this argument really only holds up within the walls of the hospital. As soon as an on-call care provider steps out of the paging range, the chance of the page making it to them drops to zero.

Plus, maintenance and support for paging towers is diminishing and eventually pagers will no longer work. Is it really worth it to wait until then to start your transition?

Pager Misconception #2 – Pagers Have a Better Battery Life

Another concern people have with switching from pagers to phones is battery life. Pagers can hold a charge for months with just AA batteries, where smartphones have to be charged at least daily.

In a mobile-first world though, this is not a concern. Most people never allow their phones to die and always carry a charger. And in the case where someone’s phone is more susceptible to low battery, it is an easy fix to pop a portable charger in their pocket to keep their smartphone on and ready to receive urgent alerts.

Pager Misconception #3 – Pagers Improve Work-Life Balance

There has been pushback from medical professionals because it is believed that using smartphones will further blur the lines between work and home. When not on duty, pagers can be tossed aside and turned off allowing providers to separate themselves from the hospital.

It is a misconception that smartphones cannot do the same. When using a clinical communication and collaboration phone app, teams do not have to provide their personal contact information to colleagues and can toggle their status ON and OFF allowing them to easily separate their time at work from time at home.

The Benefit of Replacing Pagers with Smartphones

In addition to these misconceptions, there are many more reasons smartphones should be used as a replacement for pagers that aren’t even comparable. These reasons include:

Security

With secure messaging apps teams can deliver encrypted, HIPAA compliant messages between care providers. This allows them not only to protect basic patient data, but they can also send more contextual information that is prohibited when using unencrypted pagers. By enabling physicians to deliver detailed ‘pages’ they can better assess the situation and jumpstart the decision-making process, before they even reach the scene.

This is a huge step up from pagers as there have been multiple instances where patient data was intercepted from paging devices. It was found that this data was easily accessed with equipment costing only $20 making it an easy target for cybercriminals.

Interoperability

When pagers were introduced, EHR adoption was low, and the future of interoperability was just a blip in our imagination. But now? Facilitating interoperability is a goal of lots of care teams, and pagers’ knack for siloed communication just won’t cut it.

Pager apps can integrate with all of your existing systems bringing EHR alerts to the forefront, streamlining critical lab results communications, and creating seamless telemedicine processes.

Interoperability is a must in the digital age and cannot be overlooked. So, replacing siloed pager communication is crucial to enable seamless collaboration.

Message Standardization

Pagers also lack one major advantage of modern tools: message standardization. In hospitals, clarity isn’t optional, its life saving. One person might send “Need help in ER,” while another writes “Dr. Lee – Room 3 – STAT.” No structure. No consistency.

This type of inefficiency leads to wasted time, upwards of 46 minutes per day per physician/nurse.

Paging apps fix this. Hospital leaders can create templates that ensure every message includes the right info, cutting down on the back and forth and giving the clinicians the context they need, immediately.

Priority Messaging 

Sure, pagers can show severity numbers to indicate priority, but what if your pager is across the room, or buried in your pocket? You might not see the alert right away or assume it is lower priority than reality.

Paging apps take this further by using different tones to differentiate between priority levels. That way, even if your phone is out of sight, you instantly know if it’s something urgent or routine without having to look at the screen. For busy clinicians juggling multiple tasks, that kind of immediate audible cue can make all the difference.

Role-Based Messaging 

Paging apps can streamline the paging process through role-based messaging. With the click of a button teams’ urgent messages are automatically routed to the right doctor based on both specialty and availability.

With pagers, senders are required to know who is on-call, when, and their exact pager number. This gets confusing on larger teams, especially when shifts change, doctors go on PTO or call out sick.

Escalation Policies

With pagers, if someone doesn’t respond…that’s kind of it. There’s no built in back up plan.

Paging apps automate escalations. If the first clinician doesn’t respond in time, the alert automatically gets kicked up to the next person in line. No need to resend the message to a different person or waste time trying to chase down the first. It keeps critical messages from falling through the cracks, especially during overnight shifts or emergencies.

OnPage as a Solution

OnPage is a pager replacement solution that exceeds the expectations of pagers providing teams with seamless clinical experiences and improving patient safety.

With robust on-call alerting and escalations, patient emergencies are never left unaddressed and care providers can rest easy knowing patients are safe.

Additionally, OnPage integrates with virtually any of your existing health systems, promoting interoperability and streamlining patient care.

Conclusion

While it may be hard to loosen the grip on pagers, in today’s world it’s absolutely necessary. Interoperability requirements will only increase, forcing teams to modernize and invest in technologies that effectively communicate with each other for seamless clinical workflows. By switching to OnPage’s pager app, teams gain significant workflow enhancements without sacrificing the functionalities of pagers.