Patient Flow Manager: Waco's Providence Health Center Goes Live With Prospective Patient Flow Manager From Radianse
Newest offering from Radianse optimizes patient flow and resource management throughout the hospital setting
Patient flow bottlenecks, overcrowding and diversions are common in hospitals, jeopardizing patient care, staff satisfaction and, ultimately, hospital revenue. The award-winning Providence Health Center in Waco, Texas, now has the answer: a ground-breaking patient flow visualization solution from Radianse, Inc., now implemented hospital-wide.
"A hospital is a continuum, and no area is more important than another when you start thinking about improving patient throughput," said Annette Ayers, RN, vice president of patient services at Providence. "We decided that we couldn't just implement Radianse's solution in one area, because if we did we would be missing a huge part of the overall picture of how patients move through our hospital."
Unprecedented Visibility into the Care Continuum
With nearly 30 hospital customers and more enterprise-wide installations than any other company, Radianse is healthcare's undisputed leader in productivity solutions that optimize patient flow and resource management by leveraging real-time indoor positioning technology and software integration.
Prospective Patient Flow Manager, the company's newest offering, updates the white boards that hospitals typically use to capture patient status with something far more powerful. The solution collects location, identity and time information from active radiofrequency identification (RFID) tracking tags on people and equipment, combining this information with data from other enterprise information systems. The software then sets this information in context, draws logical conclusions and automatically initiates actions that help patients move throughout the hospital more smoothly and safely. Finally, status information appears on large plasma displays so staff can quickly and easily anticipate next steps and proactively respond to improve patient flow.
"The most important benefit of Prospective Patient Flow Manager is its ability to help hospitals do more with the same amount of resources," said Mark Sakaniwa, chief executive officer of Radianse. "This level of visibility and awareness into the care continuum has both bottom-line cost-saving and top-line revenue-generating impacts, leading to very rapid return on investment. In addition, Radianse customers can expect to enhance patient and staff safety, satisfaction and overall care through expedited communication and an entirely new level of interdepartmental coordination."
Faster Access to Information = Better Care
"Providence is an extremely busy facility. Our 25-bed ER sees 58,000 patients a year, and as a major cardiac hospital, we're constantly receiving patient transfers from other facilities, so understanding where bottlenecks were occurring and how best to head them off was a priority," Ayers explained. "We looked at other patient flow systems, and we looked at other location systems, but we went with Radianse because it was the one system that incorporated both technologies — it wasn't a combination of this company and that company trying to put things together."
The first unit at Providence Health Center, a 170-bed acute care facility, went live at the beginning of November 2006, with all subsequent floors live by month's end. All patients plus key equipment and staff members are outfitted with active RFID tags, information from which is combined with data from the hospital's admission/discharge/transfer (ADT), lab reporting and order management systems. Two 42-inch plasma displays in each of the general nursing units — one for patient flow management and one for asset tracking — give clinicians a complete view of patient status throughout the hospital.
Prospective Patient Flow Manager can pinpoint bottlenecks the moment they occur (e.g., the transport team is behind schedule), display the status of patients even when they have left the unit (e.g., for a procedure) and help staff know exactly what they should do next and for which patient. With just a glance, staff can see how many patients are a fall risk, whether a patient has new orders or test results, where the nearest wheelchair is when a patient is ready for discharge, and whether a room is clean and ready for a new patient.
"Nurses are getting information faster, which means they are able to act on it faster — in fact we're even using the solution to help in recruiting because it shows how dedicated Providence is to improving care and making nurses' lives easier. Physicians have noticed the change as well, commenting on how nice it is to be able to know where their patients are without having to ask," Ayers said. "Everyone understands that Prospective Patient Flow Manager is there to help them do their jobs, perform tasks in a more timely fashion and get back to the bedside rather than waste time doing tasks that they don't need to be doing."
Unlimited Potential
With the first phase of the project completed, Ayers and her team are looking forward to other uses for Prospective Patient Flow Manager.
"We've thought of all kinds of different ways to use the technology," Ayers explained. "Eventually, we hope to use Prospective Patient Flow Manager to let people know where their family members are in the process — for example, if a certain symbol comes up, a patient is in recovery and should be heading to the floors in an hour or so. Not only does this system cut down on many phone calls, but it also reduces the frustration that comes from lack of knowledge."
Concludes Radianse CEO Sakaniwa, "With Prospective Patient Flow Manager, Radianse has successfully executed on its vision of bringing to market a solution that combines simple-to-interpret displays with critical hospital data, the industry's most intuitive software logic and the most accurate identification and location technology available to support hospitals in their quest for optimal patient flow."
About Providence Health Network
Founded in 1905, Providence Healthcare Network is a full-service medical complex, offering cardiac, orthopedic, obstetric, pediatric, psychiatric, rehabilitative and emergency services. Additionally, traditional nursing home, long-term dependent living and long-term assisted living services are provided through the network's Providence Park facility. For the first time in its history, Providence in 2006 was recognized as a Top 100 Hospital in the nation for overall performance.
About Radianse
Radianse, Inc., is the foremost provider of productivity solutions that optimize patient flow and resource management throughout the hospital. Leveraging unparalleled software integration capabilities and real-time indoor positioning systems (IPSs), Radianse solutions move patients throughout the hospital more safely and smoothly, enabling clinicians to spend less time on organizational logistics and more time on patient care. Hospitals are also able to maximize resource utilization, increasing compliance, satisfaction and revenue. For more information, please visit www.radianse.com.