by
Gus Iversen, Editor in Chief | February 22, 2019
From the January/February 2019 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
On the technology side you need a solid WIFI system that has available bandwidth. Uptime for the system needs to be high. A transparent tech team will need to monitor and manage the system while communicating with staff when issues arise. Overall, we've found the RTLS system to be stable but when outages happen front line staff miss the RTLS functionality and how important the system has become in day to day functions. It really does work in the background so the tech is not intrusive but the functionality is missed when issues arise.
HCB News: When you look at what providers can do with RTLS today, do you feel like the capabilities of these tools are being optimized or are there greater benefits that we've yet to tap into?
PS: We've only scratched the surface. It seems that the additional technology added to health care over the last decade has decreased productivity with some gains in quality and safety of care. it's time to reduce the amount of time needed to transfer information, find people, find things, understand stages of workflow and get ourselves out of the space of not knowing and into the arena of knowing. RTLS helps us know where the patient is, status and location of equipment and where staff members are when you need them. It helps us to be predictive and understand when we need to be somewhere before the request arrives and reduce patient wait time which is expensive to everyone.
If you are a provider rounding in the hospital without RTLS and you go to a patient room only to find they’re not there, what do you do? How much does that cost? Is the patient discharge process accurate and timely? If not, what is the cost of that each time it happens? How much nursing time is spent with the patient? How can you, or how do you know? Did environmental services spend enough time cleaning? How do you know? If someone is admitted to the ED and walks out because they have been waiting too long, what is that cost to the health system? Time is opportunity in health care for patient care and safety. Understanding how we can better use time may be the most important piece to innovations needed in the healthcare industry.
HCB News: Anything else you want to mention about RTLS trends that I have not asked you about?
PS: Leaders find it difficult to measure the magnitude of return from different investments opportunities. Losing the intellect, or wasting the innovation that could come from one of the more educated and passionate workforces is a cost that should not be overlooked. In the words of Sakichi Toyoda who helped develop Toyota Industries, "The most detrimental of these if not followed (elements of lean production thinking) is not growing your people." Feeding an intelligent workforce better and more accurate information helps grow their operational intelligence and improve care processes. RTLS is a great source for this information.
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