Case Study: Reading Health System achieves secure, integrated clinical communication and faster consults with Stryker

Reading Hospital Chooses Vocera Collaboration Suite to Enhance Clinical Communication and Collaboration

Reading Health System, a large regional hospital with specialty centers and a Level II Trauma Center, faced communication challenges as it moved to the Epic EHR and sought to replace unreliable pager-based consults. Clinicians reported frequent “page and wait” delays—physicians missed pages while unavailable, nurses experienced phone tag, and the system needed HIPAA‑compliant secure messaging, presence, call escalation, and Epic integration to support on-call scheduling and enterprise-wide communication.

Reading implemented the Vocera Collaboration Suite, integrating it with Epic and extending existing Vocera badge use to smartphones for secure voice and text by role/group, auditable consult routing, and on-call management. Adoption grew quickly—users rose over 30% in nine months, 70% more calling groups were created, 20 additional departments joined, and call volume exceeded 450,000 per month—resulting in faster, more reliable care-team communication and improved coordination of patient care.

Reading Health System

Jorge Scheirer

MD and CMIO