We often get asked why patient requests that aren’t “critical” (urgent and life threatening) are labeled CRITICAL in Dispatch notifications.

As a team committed to operational excellence in high-stakes clinical environments, we must ensure our most important alerts are delivered promptly and reliably.

Dispatch received special permission from Apple to send a special category of iOS push notifications called Critical Alerts. These alerts:

• Bypass Do Not Disturb and silent mode.
• Always play a sound at full volume.
• Are impossible to miss, ensuring patient needs are addressed in real time.

Apple requires these notifications are labeled CRITICAL, which isn’t ideal in a healthcare setting. We have given Apple this feedback several times and would certainly avoid badging these notifications with the word CRITICAL if we could.