Key Takeaways
- Pagers remain prevalent in healthcare: Approximately 80% of hospitals still rely on pagers for clinical communication.
- Reliability drives continued use: Pagers work during power outages, penetrate thick hospital walls, and don’t require WiFi or cellular networks
- Communication gaps create clinical risks: The average physician receives 20-30 pages per shift, with response delays contributing to adverse patient events
- Modern alternatives are emerging: Secure messaging platforms can reduce communication time by 40-50% compared to traditional paging systems
- The disconnect has consequences: Healthcare workers spend an average of 45 minutes per shift just trying to contact colleagues due to outdated communication infrastructure.
You’re scrubbing into surgery when your pager vibrates. You step out, find a phone, dial the callback number, wait on hold, and finally learn the lab results you needed five minutes ago. By the time you return, you’ve lost critical momentum.
This scenario plays out thousands of times daily in hospitals across the country. Pagers—one-way communication devices that receive short numeric or text messages—still dominate clinical communication in 2025, with an estimated 80% of hospitals using them according to JAMA Network research.
The paradox is striking: healthcare professionals carry smartphones capable of video calls, but rely on technology from the 1950s for life-or-death communication. Understanding why pagers persist—and what’s replacing them—matters for every healthcare professional navigating communication barriers that affect patient care and personal wellbeing.
How Pagers Actually Work
Pagers operate on dedicated radio frequencies separate from cellular networks. When someone pages you, they dial a phone number connected to a paging terminal. That terminal converts the message (a callback number or short text) into a radio signal that is transmitted from towers across a geographic area.
Your pager, constantly listening on its assigned frequency, receives and displays the message. The process takes 2-10 seconds under normal conditions.
The technology’s simplicity is its strength. Pagers don’t require batteries for transmission (they only receive), penetrate concrete and steel better than cellular signals, and continue functioning during network congestion or power outages.
A study published in the Journal of Hospital Medicine found pagers maintained 99.9% uptime during Hurricane Sandy when cellular networks failed. This reliability explains why critical services—fire departments, nuclear facilities, and hospitals—still depend on them.
However, the one-way nature creates inefficiency. You can’t reply directly, confirm receipt, or access additional context. The American Journal of Medical Quality reports that the average nurse spends 15-20 minutes per shift playing “phone tag” after receiving pages.
You leave your patient, find a landline, call back, get voicemail, leave a message, return to your patient, and wait for the cycle to repeat.
Why Healthcare Still Uses Pagers in 2025
Regulatory compliance and hospital infrastructure explain much of the persistence. The Joint Commission requires reliable communication systems during emergencies. Many hospitals have invested millions in paging infrastructure that still works. Replacing entire communication systems requires capital approval, IT implementation, training, and workflow redesign—resources already stretched thin.
Coverage and reliability concerns also drive decisions. Your smartphone depends on WiFi or cellular service, both of which create dead zones in elevator shafts, basement laboratories, and thick-walled surgical suites.
Research from Healthcare IT News found that 35% of hospital staff experience dropped calls or failed messages on smartphones in clinical areas. When seconds matter in a hospital code blue situation, healthcare administrators prioritize the device that works 99% of the time over the one that works 95% of the time.
Physician resistance is often cited but deserves nuance. A 2024 survey in JAMA Internal Medicine found that 67% of physicians would switch from pagers if given a HIPAA-compliant alternative with equal reliability. The resistance isn’t to change itself—it’s to adopting systems that create more work, drain phone batteries by noon, or fail during night shifts when IT support is minimal.
The Hidden Cost of Outdated Communication
Time Wasted Translates to Patient Risk and Clinician Burnout.
The average physician receives 20-30 pages per shift according to the Journal of General Internal Medicine, with each page requiring 3-7 minutes to resolve (finding a phone, calling back, waiting, communicating). That’s up to 3.5 hours per shift spent on communication logistics rather than patient care.
For nurses managing multiple patients, the interruption cascade is even worse—each page break interrupts concentration, increases error risk, and extends shift duration.
Critical Information Gets Lost in Translation.
A callback number doesn’t tell you if the page is urgent or routine. You don’t know if it’s about the patient currently crashing or yesterday’s lab result. Healthcare Quality and Safety research found that communication failures contribute to 60-80% of sentinel events (unexpected deaths or serious injuries). When a physician pages “call me” with no context, the receiving provider must guess priority while managing competing demands.
The Psychological Toll Compounds Over Time.
That constant vibration or beep creates hypervigilance—you’re never truly off duty, never fully present with the patient in front of you. The interruption-driven workflow contributes to the cognitive load that accelerates burnout.
A study in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that physicians using traditional paging systems reported 25% higher rates of emotional exhaustion compared to those using integrated secure messaging platforms.
Practical Strategies for Improving Communication
Optimize your Current System Before Demanding Replacements
Establish paging protocols with your team: use specific callback extensions for different priorities, create text codes for common situations (e.g., “STAT” for emergencies), and batch non-urgent pages during designated times. The Cleveland Clinic reduced unnecessary pages by 40% by implementing structured communication guidelines.
Advocate for Secure Messaging Alternatives
When discussing system changes with administrators, reference specific outcomes: AMIA research shows secure messaging platforms reduce response times by 50%, decrease after-hours interruptions by 35%, and improve job satisfaction scores by 28%.
Present the business case alongside the quality-of-life argument—communication inefficiency costs hospitals an estimated $12 billion annually in lost productivity.
Bridge the Gap with Hybrid Approaches
Many institutions successfully implement tiered systems: pagers for emergencies and time-sensitive critical alerts, secure messaging for routine communication and care coordination. This preserves reliability for codes and rapid responses while reducing the 15-20 non-urgent pages that fragment your day.
Create Team Communication Agreements.
Discuss with colleagues: What constitutes a true emergency worth paging? Can routine results go through secure messaging? Would scheduled check-in times reduce back-and-forth?
The University of California San Francisco reduced physician pages by 60% simply by empowering nurses to make more autonomous decisions and establishing clear escalation criteria.
Fix the Disconnect with Modern Communication for Healthcare Teams
The pager problem represents a larger truth: healthcare professionals are operating in isolation when they most need connection.
You’re managing complex patients, making high-stakes decisions, and navigating system barriers—all while using communication technology designed for a simpler era.
This is exactly what HosTalky was built to address. As an all-in-one communication and productivity platform designed specifically for healthcare professionals, HosTalky creates the peer support network that outdated paging systems can’t provide.
Instead of playing phone tag after each page, you can instantly message colleagues, share clinical insights, and troubleshoot complex cases with professionals who understand the unique pressures of healthcare work. The platform’s healthcare-specific design means you’re not just getting faster communication—you’re building professional connections.
When you receive a complex case or challenging situation, you can reach out to peers who’ve been there, get perspective from multiple specialties, and access the collective wisdom that traditional paging systems make impossible.
Learn more about creating better connections at HosTalky.
Frequently Asked Questions
Not inherently. Pagers typically transmit unencrypted messages that anyone with a radio scanner can intercept. Modern smartphones with HIPAA-compliant secure messaging apps that use end-to-end encryption are significantly more secure.
Cost, infrastructure, and workflow integration are primary barriers. A hospital paging system might cost $200,000 to maintain annually, while equipping 1,000 staff with smartphones, data plans, charging infrastructure, and secure messaging licenses could cost $1-2 million initially plus ongoing expenses.
Yes, for specific technical reasons. Pagers use dedicated radio frequencies that don’t congest during mass casualty events, unlike cell phones, which can be used simultaneously by everyone.
They also function without battery power for transmission (only receiving requires battery power), penetrate building structures more effectively, and continue operating during power outages.
Secure messaging platforms like HosTalky are HIPAA-compliant smartphone applications designed specifically for clinical communication. They offer read receipts, direct replies, image sharing, care team directories, and on-call schedules—all features traditional pagers lack.
They can, but research shows it’s frustrating and inefficient. A 2024 survey in Academic Medicine found that 78% of residents and new nurses reported the paging system as one of their top three workflow frustrations.
Industry analysts predict 10-15 more years for widespread use, with gradual decline as secure messaging platforms prove their reliability and hospitals upgrade infrastructure. Critical services (codes, rapid responses) will likely retain pagers the longest.
Conclusion
Pagers endure in healthcare not because they’re the best solution, but because they’re the most reliable option in infrastructure-challenged environments where communication failures have life-or-death consequences.
The real question isn’t whether your hospital still uses pagers, but what you’ll do about the broader communication barriers they represent. Advocate for evidence-based alternatives, optimize current systems where possible, and most importantly, build the peer connections that no technology—old or new—can replace.
Disclaimer: This article is for educational purposes only and does not constitute medical, legal, or professional advice. Healthcare communication systems should be evaluated and implemented under the guidance of qualified IT professionals, clinical leadership, and in compliance with HIPAA regulations and institutional policies. Individual experiences with communication technologies may vary.
