Hospitals can use RTLS System to aid in improving compliance reporting, hand hygiene, and staff safety, as well as workflow and patient throughput.
Healthcare facilities, similar to all businesses, rely heavily on data analysis to help make choices about:
- Facility performance.
- Patient satisfaction.
- Long-term planning.
- Other issues.
Therefore, to get the correct information, healthcare organizations need to properly collect data from all the systems and processes within the facility, campus, or health system.
This generally means gaining comprehensive information on equipment assets, workflows, and patient/staff interactions. It can be hard for healthcare staff to manage the patient’s needs and the administrative requirements of manual documentation. This can ultimately lead to human error.
Real-time location – RTLS System
Leverage IoT-enabled gadgets to automate data collection about medical equipment usage, staff interactions, and equipment location within healthcare environments.
Hospitals workers can easily use the RTLS system to aid in improving:
- Compliance reporting.
- Hand hygiene.
- Staff safety.
- Workflow.
- Patient throughput.
Subsequently, RTLS data can be merged with other sources like electronic health records or computerized maintenance management system systems to help create a pool of information that spans through the complete healthcare enterprise. In addition, administrators have a better understanding of the assets and activities that affect daily operations and patient experience.
Healthcare staff can then prioritize patient care. These data can assist in providing actionable insights about asset utilization and clinical workflow. RTSL system improves healthcare facilities and patients.
Locating Hospital Assets
It is important to make sure of the availability of equipment to provide quality patient care repost software. It is common for assets to be lost or not found quickly, especially in larger facilities. This can interrupt care and delay outcomes.
Times reports a third of nurses waste more than an hour looking for equipment during an average shift, for instance:
- Pumps.
- Drip stands.
- Patient monitoring devices.
An RTLS is a solution that can reduce the time-consuming and error-prone task involved in manually tracking inventory and asset status. So, IoT-enabled tags attached to mobile medical equipment allow a facility to identify where and how critical resources are located.
This ultimately lowers the time and effort required to search for equipment and allows the facility to determine which assets are clean and which ones are not.
As a result, employees can remotely access the location of medical equipment from their workstations or on their smart devices.
Therefore, software applications, which are part of the RTLS system, automatically generate reports showing the status and availability of equipment and the interactions between:
- Equipment.
- Patients.
- Staff using the IoT-enabled badges and tags.
This information is used to identify excess equipment, unused assets, or items that are not in stock to ensure each department has the correct supply inventory.
An RTLS solution can automate PAR-level management so that supplies are reordered as needed. Above all, using an RTLS solution, staff can replenish equipment quickly and accurately in storage rooms, pharmacies, and on the floor. This ensures that the required resources are always available.
Patient Care Report Software
A Southern California acute-care facility saw a 50% increase in equipment availability and satisfaction after the CenTrak real-time location system was implemented.
The facility’s staff used to spend a lot of time looking for equipment and sometimes even hiding it on the floor to make sure that equipment was available.
In other words, the RTLS system allows staff and administration to review the data and address any bottlenecks in their facilities. This led to a decrease in the loss rate and an increase in equipment usage.
The second role of RTLS involves ensuring that staff adheres to hand hygiene standards. Hand washing is more critical than ever in reducing the spread of Covid-19 and healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) among staff and patients.
The electronic hygiene compliance monitoring system captures every hand hygiene compliance opportunity.
The system uses an RTLS solution to monitor if a healthcare worker. People have to wash their hands before entering or leaving a patient’s room. It can also monitor patient bays equipped with sub-room location accuracy mechanisms.
A badge for staff that is IoT enabled communicates securely with sensors at wash stations and soap/sanitizer dispensers. This allows healthcare facilities to inspect current hygiene practices and identify irregularities in compliance.
Managers can use this data to guide and counsel caregivers to improve compliance rates and keep patients, staff, visitors, and others healthy.
Denver Health Medical Center, which has 555 beds, used an electronic hand hygiene monitoring device to increase hand hygiene compliance by 75%, and reduce the spread of preventable diseases.
In conclusion, the RTSL system records 100% of hand hygiene events per department, role, or individual. This allows hospitals to comprehensively audit hygiene processes and makes informed operational changes to improve hand hygiene compliance and patient safety.
