Case Study: Nash Health Care achieves 27‑minute faster bed assignments and better ED communication with Cerner CareAware Connect

Nash ED care team sees strategic advantages from mobile device deployment

Nash General Hospital’s emergency department, a high‑pressure frontline care area, faced challenges with timely communication and patient flow that slowed bed assignments and strained staff. The ED needed a way to deliver the right information to the right person quickly to reduce delays, alarm fatigue, and workflow inefficiencies.

The hospital deployed Cerner CareAware Connect, a smartphone‑based secure messaging and alarm management solution that sends selected nurse‑call requests and critical alarms to clinicians’ iPhones and allows responders to acknowledge or forward alerts. The change cut bed‑assignment time by 27 minutes per patient (about 5,028 hours a year), enabling care for roughly 774 additional patients and an estimated $1.5M in potential revenue; staff surveys (n=51) also showed a 16% improvement in perceived noise, 25% better team communication, and a 62% jump in communication‑technology satisfaction.

Nash Health Care

Caroline Vierheller

Operations improvement program coordinator