[August 21, 2014]

Saint Agnes Hospital Supports Growth and Efficiency With Spok Clinical Alerting and Secure Texting

Spok, Inc. today announced that Saint Agnes Hospital in Baltimore, Md., is continuing its focus on strong care coordination by selecting clinical alerting and secure texting solutions from Spok. For years, the growing Baltimore hospital has relied on Spok for its operator console, web directory, on-call scheduling, and pagers. Now, Saint Agnes plans to simplify communications throughout the expanding facility by linking call center and clinical solutions.

"We needed to provide two-way messaging in our workflows that included smartphones, tablets, and Spok pagers," said Paul Donnelly, director, safety, security and emergency management. "Spok clinical alerting and secure texting bring everything together for our clinicians and make it easier for them to do their jobs effectively. As we grow and the building gets bigger, we have to make sure our communications are efficient. It's critical to patient care and important for staff satisfaction."

The Spok clinical alerting solution will allow Saint Agnes to send a variety of patient monitoring system alerts to clinicians' smartphones and pagers to speed response times and enhance patient care. Additionally, the secure texting app will enable staff to access the staff directory and on-call schedules from their smartphones to reach colleagues quickly for consultations or other care coordination efforts. Staff can share patient details within the encrypted messages to make texting a HIPAA compliant communication option.

Saint Agnes also recently upgraded its hospital call center suite. "There are a lot of new features we are learning to use in the latest operator console," said Shunane Shuron-Washington, communications supervisor. "Operators like the new look, and I appreciate the enhanced reporting modules available to help us monitor our customer service levels. The team from Spok also did an excellent job making sure we were well trained."

About St. Agnes Hospital
Founded by the Daughters of Charity in 1862, Saint Agnes Hospital is a 264-bed hospital that recently completed a $200 million-plus expansion emphasizing patient safety in a high quality healthcare environment. Saint Agnes is the oldest Catholic hospital in Baltimore and is a full-service teaching hospital with residency programs in medicine and surgery. The hospital's key institutes include the Cancer Institute; Cardiovascular Institute; Maryland Metabolic Institute; Orthopaedic & Spine Institute; Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery; and The Bunting Health Institute for Women & Children. Saint Agnes opened the first Chest Pain ED in the world more than 30 years ago, and continues to expand and grow its Emergency Services.

About Spok
Spok, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Spok Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: SPOK), headquartered in Springfield, Va., is proud to be a leader in critical communications for healthcare, government, public safety, and other industries. We deliver smart, reliable solutions to help protect the health, well-being, and safety of people around the globe. More than 125,000 organizations worldwide rely on Spok for workflow improvement, secure texting, paging services, contact center optimization, and public safety response. When communications matter, Spok delivers. Visit us at spok.com or find us on Twitter (News - Alert) @Spoktweets.

Spok is a trademark of USA Mobility, Inc.

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