by
Loren Bonner, DOTmed News Online Editor | October 26, 2012
From the October 2012 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Dirksmeier stresses managing the critical operational workflows of assets in a health care facility in order to get a return on investment and make overall improvements.
“When we drive asset process compliance, we improve utilization; when we improve utilization, we reduce the capital commitment required for assets in hospitals,” he says.
RTLS is a large investment for a facility, at times requiring a beef up of Wi-Fi infrastructure, which many hospitals are doing anyway as they move to mobile devices. But the payback is quick.
Intelligent InSites’ Ruark confirms this. “On a monthly basis we measure and show the ROI. We’re seeing time to pay back as short as 12 months, but most times it’s in the 18 to 24 month range. Actual cost savings happen immediately because you’ll see that drop in procurement and a drop in rental if you’re renting,” he says.
Arvid Gomez, president of Sonitor Technologies added, “Another area that RTLS enables a facility to cut costs is through automated nurse calls which free nurses to focus on patient care. This drives staff efficiency, quality of care and better patient outcomes.”
Leapfrog into patient management
Almost all RTLS providers interviewed told DOTmed News that the technology is being used increasingly for patient flow and workforce management.
“It has grown way out of the concept of managing just an asset,” says Miller. “Hospitals have finally figured out it’s not just about location and finding things anymore; it’s really about what do we do with this information and how do we use it to operate more efficiently.”
Miller says she used to get one call a month with requests for OR and ED system integration; today, she says, it’s at least one call a day. On the clinical side, RTLS can translate into less ED wait times because beds can be turned around that much quicker with alerts to get a free bed cleaned and into production earlier.
Jay Deady, CEO of Awarepoint, says many of his clients have the numbers to back it up: 20 to 25 percent decrease in ED wait times; 60 to 75 percent reduction of ED left without service; adding 49 OR cases per month; and 25 to 50 percent reduction in bed turnover times.
Although GE Healthcare started with asset management, Dirksmeier says that managing patient flow has caught on quickly, due in large part to hospitals realizing that they need to focus on operations to change the way health care is delivered.
“We see this as a big growth area for GE, and more importantly, a way to change the delivery of health care,” he says. Delivering health care in a more efficient way is a top priority for hospitals today as health care reform begins linking quality metrics and patient satisfaction to reimbursement.
