Description: A 747-bed nonprofit teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School and a founding member of Partners HealthCare System, an integrated health care delivery network. BWH is committed to excellence in patient care with expertise in virtually every specialty of medicine and surgery.

Challenge: High operational and capital expenses based on excess rentals and repurchasing lost equipment including telemetry transmitters, 12-lead ECG cables, infusion pumps, portable monitors, defibrillators, external pacers and other devices; physicians having to wait for equipment to start procedures; nurses needing to “hunt and gather” that equipment; patients potentially having to wait for care because of delays in finding equipment

Solution: Radianse real-time location platform installed hospital-wide, with Radianse asset tracking to cover upwards of 10,000 medical devices across all major care areas on 17 hospital floors — including perioperative and emergency departments.

Benefits: Return on investment in just over a year; yearly gross savings projected at $300,000; increased staff satisfaction and productivity based on finding equipment quickly; real-time alerts increase efficiency and reduce loss; improved equipment flow

In their words:

“Surgeons were waiting for essential equipment to be found before procedures could begin. Nurses were typically charged with hunting and gathering, which took them away from direct patient care. And we wanted to intervene before patient wait times became too long.

“With a manual system, you’re only going to get so much improvement. Now, instead of requiring supervisors to track down misplaced equipment, we have the tracking system to tell us where things went with the exact date and time.”

Michael Fraai
Director, Biomedical Engineering

“Reducing ‘hunting and gathering’ can also impact length of stay, significant in a hospital that treats the sickest of the sick and where clinicians are constantly trying to find a bed. Just going from 5.5 to 5.4 days can trigger 700 more discharges and $10 million in revenue.

“It was relatively easy to put in, not very invasive. Whenever you do an IT project, you feel really good about the ones that went well, went quick and offer good results. This was definitely in that category, very easy.”

Sue Schade
Chief Information Officer

Press Release
Brigham and Women’s Hospital goes live in patient tower with Radianse Reveal Asset Tracking