Success Stories
"Knowing where everything is has a huge impact on our overall
efficiency as an organization,and consequently on our cost-effectiveness.
Nurse managers today will not accept new equipment without RFID tags."
- George Morley
Director Biomedical Engineering
PinnacleHealth
Description
The leading hospital and healthcare system in Central Pennsylvania, PinnacleHealth Hospitals offer services from prenatal to geriatrics. The system includes a 546-bed Harrisburg Hospital and 148-bed Community Hospital.
Challenge
Poor communication around patient surgical status contributed to inefficient workflow and patient throughput, creating staff frustration around the delays and inefficiencies. Too much time was being wasted hunting and gathering every type and size of equipment, such as thermometers, walkers, pumps and stretchers. Worse yet, assets were missing.
Solution
PinnacleHealth extended its initial patient-tracking application as part of a perioperative workflow application to hospital-wide asset tracking, working on the Radianse real-time location system (RTLS) platform. When complete, the Radianse RTLS will let hospital personnel throughout the system immediately locate as many as 10,000 devices, such as keys to pain-controlled anesthesia (PCA) pumps, wheelchairs, defibrillators, beds, stretchers and cleaning equipment.
Benefits
Radianse technology has transformed PinnacleHealth's perioperative workflow to increase patient safety, automate processes and measure significant clinical events. It has also reduced the need to hunt and gather equipment, keeping clinicians focused on patient care.
PinnacleHealth's flagship 546-bed Harrisburg Hospital enjoyed a return on investment from real-time asset tracking in 12 short months, representing $900,000 in savings.
In their words
"Knowing where everything is has a huge impact on our overall efficiency as an organization, and consequently on our cost-effectiveness. Nurse managers today will not accept new equipment without RFID tags. We will put a tag on just about anything—not just expensive items. If a nurse has to spend time searching for it, it's worth tagging. We want our nurses to be where they want to be: at the bedside providing service, feeling effective and being efficient."
George Morley, Director Biomedical Engineering
In their words
"We faced capacity constraints in the OR that we were able to address by improving the efficiency of patient flow. This is primarily a sophisticated communication tool for our staff, allowing them to see what's going on at a glance, anticipate needs and eliminate surprises. Its effectiveness depends on a very robust indoor location system that has the granularity—the very specific location pinpointing ability—that we need to accomplish our goals."
Dr. Craig Wisman, Vice President of Medical Affairs