From Health Data Management,
January 1, 2008

RFID Moves Beyond Assets

Columbus (Ind.) Regional Hospital executives wanted to get the most bang for the buck from their new nurse call system. So when they discovered that the technology, from Rauland-Borg Corp., Skokie, Ill., can use radio frequency identification technology to track clinicians to enable them to better communicate with each other, they came up with some other ideas for how RFID could help improve workflow and patient care.

By Beckie Kelly Schuerenberg, Senior Editor

Excerpt, page 2:

Patient tracking is on the horizon at Southern Ohio Medical Center, but the Portsmouth-based hospital already has improved workflow and care quality just by using RFID to track assets. About six months ago, the hospital purchased the technology, from Lawrence, Mass.-based Radianse Inc., to enable biomedical engineering staff to more quickly locate recalled medical supplies and equipment, says Greg Malone, supervisor of the department.

It often took several days for his three-person staff to locate items across the 222-bed hospital for preventive maintenance. But with recent recalls of I.T. and medical equipment with potentially exploding batteries and other dangerous malfunctions, the hospital wanted to increase the speed of locating assets, Malone says.

Southern Ohio installed an RFID network and began tagging assets last July. But before biomedical engineering staff had the chance to test the system to locate recalled assets, other clinical departments jumped at the chance to use RFID. For example, inpatient rehabilitation and patient direction staff began using it to locate wheelchairs for patients entering the hospital.

"We were excited people were using it already," Malone says, especially because biomedical engineering had planned to offer enterprisewide access to the tracking system by September.

As of late November, Southern Ohio has tagged 1,700 pieces of equipment. The hospital writes identifiable information about each asset to each tag, such as its serial number, biomedical engineering number and manufacturer information, so staff can search the management application using those parameters.

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