Gundersen Health System

Challenge:

With 8,000 employees scattered across clinics throughout the Midwest, timely and effective communication wasn’t always easy for Gundersen Health System. Healthcare professionals would have to take time away from their patients to attend staff meetings and trainings, and all that travel wasn’t cheap.

The La Crosse, Wis. teaching hospital needed a forward-thinking, cost-saving solution to streamline communications and, in the process, promote more collaboration among its staff and better-inform patients.

Solution:

The hospital turned to Mediasite to capture and stream video trainings live and on-demand that are all available in its secure and searchable internal online Mediasite Showcase, including:

• Grand Rounds: Physicians in the hospital’s cancer center conduct weekly grand rounds videos that are webcast live to staff and also available on-demand. Grand Rounds provide opportunities for physicians to share current best practices, highlight important research and answer questions from colleagues and staff.
• Staff and resident education: As a teaching hospital, its residents and staff give many presentations and lectures. Time and space prohibit everyone from attending live, but streaming them means no one misses a beat, and they can go back and review the content anytime.
• New product training: When Gundersen Health System implemented its new electronic health records system, Mediasite played a pivotal role in ensuring all staff understood how to use the new technology. By recording short training videos on different topics, it created a video library of how-to videos staff can access whenever needed.
• Patient education: If a patient signs a release specifically allowing the hospital to record doctor-patient interactions, the video can be used for educational purposes. Plus, the hospital’s registered dieticians create a mini-series called Nutrition Bites for the public on topics like weight management.

Results:

Gundersen Health System has created more than 3,100 videos – 35,300+ hours of content – to date. The amount of travel for staff is down, which ultimately means they’re able to spend more time with their patients.

“The thing that our staff likes best about Mediasite is that they now have the option to stream these videos from their desk. It cuts down on the time they had to spend attending meetings. They can still participate live if they choose, and it’s easily available on-demand if they need to reference a recording,” said Amanda Hoy, Medical Media Supervisor, Gundersen Health System.

Hoy continued: “We create catalogues of videos for different departments, and all of our content is easily searchable and shareable internally. But at the same time, it’s very secure, which is of utmost importance when dealing with sensitive healthcare information. With Mediasite, we’re able to ensure only the people who are supposed to see the content are able to do so. It’s remarkable what a difference incorporating video into our teaching and learning strategy has made.”