Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center, a 410-bed regional hospital in Camden, N.J., is implementing a real-time location system (RTLS) to track a variety of mobile equipment and hospital assets so they’re easier to find and maintain.
The facility, part of the Lourdes Health System, is deploying an RTLS from RadarFind that leverages active ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) RFID transponders operating at 902 to 928 MHz and using multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) communication. MIMO is a wireless communication technique utilizing multiple analog signal paths among multiple antennas at both the transmitter and receiver to transmit data. The RadarFind asset tags feature sliding switches that nurses can activate to indicate whether an asset is in use, requires cleaning or is ready for use.
“Our objective is to reduce the burden on the nursing staff from chasing the equipment needed for direct patient care,” says Maureen Hetu, CIO at Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center. The hospital will employ about 1,000 tags in the initial installation to track specialty beds, stretchers, mobile telemetry monitors, IV pumps and wheelchairs. Each tag contains a unique identifier associated with a serial number encoded to a 2-D bar-code label also affixed to the item. The bar-code number is then associated to information in a back-end database, thus linking the tag to a particular device, as well as related information, such as the item’s serial number, make and manufacturer.
About 500 RadarFind interrogators will be installed throughout the hospital to track items at the room level, Hetu says, though exact deployment locations are still being worked out. The readers pass along the ID numbers culled from the tags to collectors, which are devices that manage multiple readers (RadarFind suggests installing one collector per floor). The interrogators can communicate with the collectors either by transmitting their data over the air using the 902-928 MHz UHF band or by sending special data signals over the hospital’s power lines. The collectors then pass the data, via a local area network, to a RadarFind server.
RadarFind will also be integrated with the hospital’s equipment repair and preventative maintenance system, so the current location of the equipment will be available when the engineering staff needs to perform a repair or conduct preventative maintenance.
Nurses and staff in the biomedical engineering or central supply divisions, as well as at the receiving dock, will use RadarFind to track the equipment’s real-time location, including its movement and utilization, and be able to monitor and find items in need of repair or scheduled maintenance. By sliding a switch on the tag, the nurses will be able to immediately let the hospital’s engineering staff know that a specific item needs to be repaired, as well as where it’s located. “Equipment impacted by recall notices can be located and remediated quickly,” Hetu adds, “reducing the risk that a patient is harmed.”
In addition, the system will be utilized to help the hospital determine when a nursing unit lacks a sufficient quantity of certain items, such as infusion pumps, to effectively treat patients. “Support staff can then proactively redeploy equipment back to the unit so it’s available for use when needed,” says Hetu.
Another RadarFind customer, Wayne Memorial Hospital, says it has already reduced its expenses by more than $300,000 by tracking about 1,000 medical devices throughout its facility (see At Wayne Memorial, RFID Pays for Itself).
Our Lady of Lourdes has its sights set on numerous benefits gained from the RTLS, including a significant reduction in the time nurses spend hunting down equipment, ultimately increasing, as Hetu explains, “the time available for a nurse to be at the bedside caring for their patients.” Because rental equipment can be located and retuned more quickly, the hospital will be able to reduce rental fees. “Currently, it’s difficult to find rental equipment once it arrives in the medical center, so we pay rental fees much longer than we should,” she adds. Moreover, Hetu says she believes the system will help cut replacement costs for lost equipment, because it will be set to send e-mail and other alerts when equipment is moved into unauthorized or unexpected areas, such as into the laundry area or off the hospital premises.
The RadarFind system, the deployment of which began last week and will continue through February, will store historical information regarding the various locations where equipment has been. That historical data will be used to help the hospital refine its processes to help control patient infections. “When coupled with details from our infection-control system,” Hetu says, “we’ll not only be able to tell where patients with infections had been, we’ll also be able to tell exactly which pieces of equipment they’ve used. This allows us to quickly focus even more intensely on cleaning devices that had been in contact with infected patients, and help to stop the spread of infections.”
According to Hetu, the hospital anticipates expanding the system to track patients, once the equipment-tracking functionality is deployed and the hospital has confirmed its value. “We can gain invaluable insight into our process flows and any potential bottlenecks by tracking patients throughout their inpatient stays,” she says. “Once we have the tracking data, we can do some powerful process improvement activities and become a more efficient health-care organization.”
Additionally, the Lourdes Health System has allocated funding in 2008 to expand RadarFind to a second hospital—the Lourdes Medical Center of Burlington County, located in Willingboro, N.J.