Hospital Now Uses Stanley Healthcare’s Wi-Fi RTLS to Track Trauma Surgeons
Stanley Healthcare, a market leading provider of safety, security and operational efficiency solutions for the healthcare industry, has announced innovative ways by which Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare is leveraging its Stanley Healthcare AeroScout® Real-Time Location System (RTLS) to solve business and clinical needs. The hospital has now further extended its Stanley Healthcare RTLS solution to automate staff tracking.
“We saw an opportunity to automatically track community-based trauma surgeons on campus to help collect data needed for Trauma Certification in the E.D.,” said Emily Yankee, system administrator at Tallahassee Memorial.
Trauma surgeons at Tallahassee Memorial are independent contractors. To maintain Level 2 certification, the hospital must measure several metrics. With the Stanley Healthcare solution, Tallahassee Memorial is able to automatically record the time the system paged the surgeon, the time the surgeon called in, the time the surgeon arrived at the building, and the time the surgeon enters the trauma center or task lab. Surgeons no longer need to check in when entering the Emergency Department (E.D.) and thus can immediately go to trauma bays to assess patients’ conditions. The solution also eliminates the need to manually document when the doctor enters the patient room.
“Prior to using Stanley Healthcare’s RTLS, tracking doctors was a manual and time-intensive process,” said Yankee. “By giving Wi-Fi RFID tags to all trauma surgeons, we’ve been able to accurately time-stamp the doctors’ arrival times at the hospital, how long it took them to get to the E.D. and monitor their movement into other areas of the hospital such as the operating room and Cath Lab. In addition to helping satisfy Trauma Certification requirements, patient care has also been expedited by the new process.”
Located in Tallahassee, Florida, Tallahassee Memorial is a 772-bed acute care facility and the region’s only state-designated trauma center. An early adopter of RTLS for asset tracking, the hospital originally deployed Stanley Healthcare’s RTLS to streamline the management of a large number of assets and mobile Wi-Fi devices. It later extended the solution for par level management to improve utilization and allocation of equipment, chokepoints to minimize equipment loss, and environmental monitoring to save staff time and improve regulatory compliance. Among the many benefits it has realized since implementing the Stanley Healthcare RTLS solution, Tallahassee Memorial saved more than $1 million in a single year through improved equipment utilization.
Tallahassee Memorial is also tracking dietary staff workflow by locating their tablet PCs and voice-over-IP (VoIP) phones. This tracking is accomplished without RFID tags since Stanley Healthcare’s solution is able to locate any Wi-Fi device that staff is using, and display the location on Stanley Healthcare’s MobileView software. The system makes it easy to identify the closest staff to engage a new patient in a timely manner, track delivery of patient meals and monitor the number of trips to pantries to maintain sufficient food stock.
“Tallahassee Memorial continually demonstrates innovative thinking when it comes to extracting more and more value from its RTLS solution, with limited additional investment required,” said Charlotte Miller, BSN, MBA, RN-BC, Director of Nursing Informatics Solutions at Stanley Healthcare. “It has been able to harness the power of Wi-Fi RTLS to find unique, cost-effective solutions to improve patient care by reducing wait times and increasing patient and staff satisfaction through process automation. We’re pleased to partner with Tallahassee Memorial to explore the endless capabilities of its Stanley Healthcare RTLS solution.”