The following is a guest article by Scott Hondros, Vice President of Professional Services at CenTrak.
It’s often said that necessity is the mother of invention. This theory has been tested within the healthcare industry over the last few years as the COVID-19 pandemic aligned with, and expedited, the retirement of many employees in the Baby Boomer generation. Nearly 29 million Baby Boomers retired in 2020, three and a half million more than in 2019. While their increased retirement has been anticipated, the associated timing compounded staffing challenges within the healthcare industry and left leadership seeking solutions.
Healthcare professionals have remained resilient over the course of the pandemic and the resulting stress has been well documented. Even so, the circumstances have amplified staff burnout and pressured an already fragile labor market. Decreasing the stress placed on healthcare professionals is critical to combating burnout and promoting staff retention.
The disruption from the pandemic and its aftermath has led to the rapid acceleration of healthcare digitization and the adoption of new technology to meet facility needs. Real-Time Location Systems (RTLS) have benefited greatly from the acceleration and adoption of technologies such as AI, Machine Learning (ML), and Robotic Process Automation (RPA). The growth of these technologies and their impact on RTLS have enabled faster completion of internal healthcare processes, reduced manual administration steps, and provided staff with greater support. By automating processes, clinicians can spend more time being clinicians and less time on non-clinical administrative and operational tasks. It’s no secret that improving operational workflow significantly benefits staff productivity, satisfaction, and morale as well as care quality.
How Healthcare Benefits from Enterprise Visibility
RTLS have been proven to offer cost-effective solutions that ease operational burdens and enhance safety for both patients and staff. The IoT technology and location sensors behind RTLS feature active-radio frequency identification (RFID) badges and tags to offer immediate enterprise visibility into the precise location of equipment, colleagues, or patients, while increasing workflow efficiencies.
Lessening the workloads of healthcare professionals is a critical aspect of combating burnout and promoting staff retention, and investing in retention makes fiscal sense for a facility’s bottom line. To jointly provide the best care and employee experience, staff need access to platforms that automate workflow to truly alleviate manual documentation, which has shown to save hours of time for care providers, and offer proactive communications. Workflow platforms that leverage RTLS data automatically keep tabs on key patient flow metrics and ensure staff know where all patients are in their care journey.
Effective enterprise-wide care coordination can be greatly hindered by manual workflow systems. Manual systems require a significant amount of time and attention that can otherwise be reallocated back to patient care. Healthcare decision-makers can eliminate non-value-added tasks by investing in an advanced workflow platform that enables the use of staff display boards, which show real-time facility visibility. Through this automated system, teams are on the same page with up-to-the-minute insight to continuously measure interactions, reduce bottlenecks, and consider the best staffing methods. Real-time communications and enterprise visibility into topics such as the location of mobile medical equipment and when rounds last occurred keep operations running smoothly with high productivity and satisfaction.
Increase Equipment Insights in Healthcare Facilities
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the lack of supply chain visibility, especially within the healthcare industry. When supply demand during the pandemic became urgent and global distribution was disrupted, healthcare organizations navigated the challenges largely without the necessary technology and plans in place to accurately predict and replenish asset inventories. Without adequate visibility, healthcare systems struggled to properly assess need and allocate supplies as appropriate.
Healthcare facilities that have now implemented RTLS deployments with asset management capabilities and tools, such as asset visibility and overall process optimization, report an immediate improvement in supporting resource-constrained staff. Hospitals have measured more than a 50% increase in staff satisfaction following the implementation of a real-time asset management solution and the respective RFID tags. This offering provides real-time room and bay-level map views and status intel to improve asset utilization, sanitary requirements, equipment orders, and rentals. By incorporating or expanding the RTLS to include asset visibility, facility operations become more streamlined as caregivers and clinical staff have a fast and accurate asset search tool at their fingertips.
After a deployment of RTLS asset monitoring, hospitals have experienced thousands of hours reallocated back to patient care, major reductions in asset purchase requests, increased equipment supply data accuracy, improved staff satisfaction, and a quantifiable increase in both soft and hard dollar savings. The use of RTLS asset management provides an annual savings of ~$2 million at Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. Additionally, healthcare facilities can easily enhance their existing solution to include automated PAR-level management and rental modules to automatically inform operations teams of equipment orders so they can efficiently manage tools post-patient use.
Improve the Patient and Staff Relationship to Improve the Overall Experience
Many healthcare systems are pursuing digital transformations, automation, and enhanced technology to provide new value to patients and reduce stressors on staff. In 2020, 90% of hospitals and health systems implemented an AI and automation strategy, up from 53% in 2019, and it’s only continued to increase in the following years.
An important aspect of the patient experience is ensuring that patients and loved ones are comfortable and informed throughout the care journey. To do so, healthcare organizations are likely to seek stronger communication between patients, staff, and loved ones. By utilizing RTLS alongside a robust patient workflow software, automated family text messaging features can share updates with patient-approved contacts in real-time as patients move throughout the phases of care. Family text messaging can return some comfort to patients as visitation restrictions remain ever-changing, and organizations that have implemented this offering have seen an increase in trust among the patient, medical staff, and family members. RTLS implementations also offer automated proactive patient communications to share status details, wait times, and directions.
Digital wayfinding can reduce anxiety for patients and visitors as healthcare systems seek cost-effective ways to provide a better experience. On a first visit to a new facility, it is estimated that approximately 30% of patients get lost. Navigational difficulties can lead to late arrivals, missed appointments, and ultimately delayed patient care. In addition to impacting the patient’s care, hospitals nationwide collectively lose ~$150 billion each year from missed appointments. An advanced digital wayfinding solution integrated with the larger RTLS deployment can prepare a customized route for a patient using a private Google Maps-like interface, send the link via text message, and ensure easy navigations.
Leveraging RTLS for the Best ROI
As healthcare providers constantly consider new approaches to support staff and provide a better experience for patients, selecting an RTLS partner with a comprehensive suite of solutions makes it easier to expand into other use cases and give broader support in the future. Seek RTLS providers that work with nurses, former hospital administrators, epidemiologists, and clinic managers as part of their implementation and consulting teams. Each of these individuals have worked in the field and bring firsthand experience to hospital pain points. Through their practical guidance, healthcare facilities can maximize real-time technologies, increase visibility and communication, and leverage automation for meaningful change throughout the enterprise.
About Scott Hondros
Scott Hondros is the Vice President of Professional Services at CenTrak, which offers locating, sensing, and security solutions for the healthcare industry. CenTrak has helped more than 2,000 healthcare organizations around the world build a safer, more efficient enterprise. For more information visit centrak.com
