Hospital asset tracking RTLS and Patient flow management software
Hospital workflow tracking & reducing patient wait times in outpatient clinics and emergency departments – The client is a leading nonprofit eye hospital with 5 outpatient centres across the country and treating over 1000 outpatients every day. Due to the sheer volume of outpatient patient inflow, it is increasingly becoming difficult for the operations team to deliver a superlative patient experience, ensuring patient safety by measuring patient waiting times and sending alerts to concerned departments for corrective actions.
Optimizing Patient Wait Times in Outpatient Clinics
Overcrowding in certain departments, patient workflow tracking, nursing staff workflow, wheelchair tracking, and portable medical equipment location are matters of concern. The same with regular housekeeping, repairs, preventive maintenance tracking, and inspections, which need to be taken up regularly and need to be tracked regularly for hospital waiting time statistics. Remote worker tracking has an impact on patient safety and experience, especially in casualty and operation theatre departments.
The departments covered include the hospital front office, pharmacy, central stores, operation theater, optical shop, counselors, medical wards, laboratory, secretary desk, and billing to compute KPI for patient waiting time. Measuring hospital workflow in surgical departments is part of their key priorities, as in Africa, many of the hospitals and clinics had no measurement methods for measuring patient wait times, resulting in patients having to wait for hours, or being made to run from pillar to post to complete the procedures and emergency room wait time tracker for improving the wait time to triage at the emergency department.
Practical Approaches to Cut Wait Times in Outpatient Clinics
Nursing care is a critical aspect of any hospital. Ensuring hygiene, medical rounds, attendance, tracking locations, availability inwards during emergencies, training, and development, etc, are factors that help in improving patient experience through well-monitored hospital workflow processes.
Our modules and solutions have been designed keeping in mind the workforce in the healthcare sector. Our Bluetooth indoor positioning system can analyse the position data from our asset tags to provide concerned departments with real-time information that could help them optimise resource activities and improve their productivity, besides reducing patient waiting time to deliver a positive patient experience, online appointment scheduling & queue management using Asset Tracking System
For example, one dashboard indicator is the number of visits made by hospital staff to various departments and also the duration of such visits. Again, any deviation from standard procedures would result in alerts being sent to the concerned floor supervisor to take corrective measures and prepare patient wait time questionnaires accordingly.
Location movement matrices of hospital staff are also provided by the platform, which will help notify those in charge regarding any violations or deviations from the daily routine of the workforce. Alerts and notifications are sent in case staff or visitors move into the restricted emergency departments of the hospital.
Our RTLS solutions can be used here to assign healthcare workflows to various members of the hospital staff, including nurses, housekeeping, and maintenance technicians, helping them to adhere to hospital protocols and health standards that are globally accepted. This enables the hospital to adhere to various compliances and benchmarks that exist in the healthcare sector.
Patient flow management software
Asset tracking in hospitals can improve equipment utilisation and reduce maintenance costs. For hospitals, knowing where their assets are is essential for business operations. High-value assets like IV pumps, heart monitors, personal protective equipment (PPE), syringe pumps, oxygen cylinders, etc., need to be located instantly when an emergency occurs. Having visibility into the location of these assets can simplify the workflow and save a lot of time. Beyond the tracking, robust management of assets can be achieved, including asset repair/ maintenance and asset utilisation.
Assets are tagged, which provides location information while entering a defined “zone”. This will help in monitoring various parameters like current location, total time spent in a zone, entry/exit times, etc. Even low-value assets like wheelchairs and associated workers, medical stretchers, causality bed occupancy, etc. can also be tracked efficiently.
Tracking and Analyzing Patient Wait Times
In order to utilize the workforce effectively, tracking their location and working hours is very important. The presence of emergency department Doctors, nurses, and other staff needs to be monitored continuously to ensure the right amount of services are delivered to the patients and visitors. This will help the hospital management to run the operations seamlessly, implementing Effective patient triage systems & introducing Self-service kiosks for check-in and registration.
Also, patients can be tracked in case of emergency and if they are visiting the right department for services, understanding queues for various services, and providing emergency support where needed.
Battery-powered anchors (repeaters, the size of a soapbox) are placed in areas to be monitored and can be converted into reading zones. Whenever the tagged employee comes to the anchor’s vicinity, automatic data collection will happen and the location can be easily identified. By defining zones, we can prevent unauthorised access as well. Any unauthorised entry will trigger alerts.
Effective Hospital Crowd Management Techniques
Uncontrolled crowding in the hospital causes headaches for management. Easily monitor the number of patients outside Doctors’ cabins, pharmacies, etc. If the allowed limit is breached, an alert will be sent to the concerned staff. This helps in efficient crowd control and social distancing.
Measuring and Reducing Wait Times in Surgical Departments
Effectively monitor the patient waiting times in different surgical departments, such as orthopaedics and cardiology. Alerts will be sent to concerned staff if a predefined patient waiting time is exceeded in a specific department or area for a patient is over. Management can take necessary actions that will enhance patient experience significantly to reduce patient waiting time in the emergency department
Intruder Detection and Restricted Zone Access Monitoring
Using hospital asset tracking RTLS, intruder detection can be enabled. Whenever an entry to the restricted area by an untagged person occurs, an alert will be sent to the concerned staff. Also, these sensors help in detecting rodents in areas like server rooms, which can prevent damage to electronic devices.
Similarly, we can define restricted areas using anchors. When an unassigned tagged person enters the area (server room, accounts, medicine storage, etc.), the alerting system will notify management immediately.
Hospital Cold Chain Storage Monitoring
In healthcare, there are items that need to be maintained at the proper temperature in order to increase their life span. Medication, vaccines, blood, and supplies are items that need proper temperature control. Any deviation in the ideal temperature may cause damage to these items and result in loss of money for the hospitals and a threat to patient safety.
Temperature humidity, distance, and pressure sensors will be placed inside the storage unit to continuously monitor the environmental conditions. Any deviation from the ideal temperature will trigger an alert, and the concerned authority can take necessary actions.
Optimizing Hospital Housekeeping with Monitoring Solutions
Ensure housekeeping staff are visiting areas to be cleaned on time using tags. Monitor the complete movement of staff throughout the premises to prevent unauthorised entry to unassigned departments. A well-managed housekeeping system with E-paper implementation will enhance the patient experience as well.
Preventing Theft and Equipment Misuse in Hospitals
Using anti-theft movement sensors can reduce theft. Whenever a theft attempt occurs, accelerometer triggers and alerts will be generated immediately. This will help management to reduce theft and take necessary actions through facilities management.
Advanced IoT Dashboard Solutions for Hospital Asset Tracking RTLS
A facility, located on a sprawling 5-acre campus, has three blocks for outpatient consulting, cataract laser treatment, an operating theatre, and administration. The outpatient wing is spread over 40,000 sq. feet and has a Bluetooth mesh network deployed, giving an indoor location tracking accuracy ranging from 2.5 meters to 10 meters. Patients are given sanitised Bluetooth beacons at the time of entering the premises to track their movement within the eye hospital premises. RFID readers – fixed and handheld versions- are deployed at various locations, such as waiting areas and billing counters, to cross-check the patient workflow.
Call us to know more about our IoT webinar events, IoT healthcare projects, hospital asset tracking RTLS in healthcare deployments, surgical workflow tracking, patient wait times tracking alerts, experience management, hospital workflow tracking, and nursing workflow systems.