Christiana Uses RTLS to Get Patients to Bed

Premise's bed-management software, which the organization began implementing in phases in September 2005 and finished installing in June of this year, enables nurses and housekeeping staff to communicate when a bed is needed for a patient, requires cleaning or has been cleaned and is ready for a patient. "Prior to this bed-management system, there was no process for getting a bed cleaned, as ridiculous as that sounds," says Konen, adding that it would often take a half-dozen calls to get a bed cleaned and assigned. "The new process allows for automatic notification of a bed being dirty, and an automatic assignment of a housekeeper to go clean that bed."

The integration of the bed-management software with Amelior EDTracker allows the emergency departments to communicate more easily with housekeeping. When a patient is checked in and requires a bed, staff members can use a computer to access the Amelior EDTracker software and input a bed request. Amelior EDTracker passes that request to the bed-management system, and when a bed becomes available, the Premise software automatically sends a page alerting the ER nurses.

When a patient is discharged or moved to another room, the nurse can pick up the room phone, dial an extension and enter a number indicating that a specific bed needs to be cleaned. The Premise software automatically assigns a housekeeper to that room by sending a page to the appropriate worker. Once the task is done, the housekeeper uses the room phone to inform the bed-management system that the bed is now available. The bed's status is then automatically updated in Amelior EDTracker. Thus, a nurse can receive a page or access Amelior EDTracker to determine which beds are available, then locate—in real time—the appropriate patients to assign to those beds.

"With these systems, the goal is to get the patient in the right bed the first time," Konen says, adding that the integration is saving the hospital time and money. With more accurate patient tracking, a better understanding of where each patient is located and the status of that person's care, as well as better management of beds, the hospital staff has more time to spend directly with patients because they require less time for performing administrative tasks.

Christiana Care Health System would like to expand its tagging to additional patients in other departments, as well as assets. But the organization does not want to use the infrared/RFID tags, in large part because such a deployment would be too expensive. "IR works pretty well in the emergency departments," Konen notes, "but there are some issues with line-of-sight reads that are problematic—plus, the infrastructure costs to put the system in across the entire hospitals would be cost-prohibitive."

For now, Konen and his team are not convinced other tracking technologies—such as conventional RFID tags or ultrawide-band (UWB) technology—are quite ready. "We haven't seen yet the technology we think is mature enough to get us there," he says.