Mountain Region CommonSpirit Health’s Dr. Valerie McKinnis shares innovative RTLS applications at St. Francis Interquest in Colorado. Part 2 highlights RTLS-enabled staff announcements, enhancing patient-staff interactions. Patients now see staff names, roles, and photos on room TVs, reducing confusion. RTLS tracking optimizes patient care by locating patients, improving safety, and streamlining staff communication. Asset tracking minimizes equipment search times, while RTLS-tagged personal items prevent losses. RTLS supports hand hygiene monitoring and even monitors refrigerator temperatures. Staff find increased efficiency and joy in their work, as patient care takes center stage.
In this continuation of our series on how St. Francis Interquest, the visionary “hospital of the future” in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and a part of the extensive CommonSpirit Health network, has harnessed Real-Time Location System (RTLS) technology to accomplish the quadruple aim, we sat down with Dr. Valerie McKinnis, Chief Medical Informatics Officer at Mountain Region CommonSpirit Health, a 20-hospital health system. To revisit part one of this compelling story, click here.
Q: Can you shed light on the second significant RTLS application: RTLS-enabled staff announcements? What purpose do they serve, and how have they impacted patient care?
A: The COVID-19 pandemic shed light on how disempowered patients often feel in hospital settings. During the pandemic, it became evident that patients were unsure about the identities and roles of staff entering their rooms due to the necessity of masks and gowns. I recall an incident during my time as a hospitalist when I rounded on a patient for a week without her realizing I was her doctor. She had no clue whether I was from housekeeping, nuor rsing, or what my role entailed.
This experience made it clear that even in non-pandemic times, patients, especially the elderly or those on pain medications, often have no idea who enters their room and why. Drawing from our pandemic experiences, we decided to leverage RTLS technology alongside other systems to display each staff member’s name, role, and photo on the patient’s TV when they enter the room.
Through this approach, we have ensured that patients are never left in the dark. As long as they have access to the TV, they can identify each staff member and understand their role and purpose in their care. We have also integrated this information into Epic MyChart bedside, allowing patients with visual challenges to access this information through a fixed iPad by their bedside.
Caring for patients in today’s complex hospital environment involves numerous individuals, and granting patients control over who is caring for them and why they are there has become a fundamental requirement in the hospital of the future.
Q: Moving on to the third aspect, RTLS tracking is one of the most common applications in healthcare. Could you describe your implementation and the successes it has yielded?
A: In a typical hospital setting, like the one I work at in Denver, our nurses and doctors often play the role of “hunters and gatherers.” Our staff members frequently cover several miles a day searching for people and items. As a hospitalist, I often found myself chasing patients around the facility during daily rounds, trying to locate them in various locations such as radiology or the pre-op area.
Believe it or not, I’ve even searched for a patient only to discover they were in their bathroom. To address this challenge, we needed to ensure the safety of our patients and improve care efficiency. Implementing RTLS for patient tracking involved embedding a lightweight RTLS tag into the traditional patient hospital wristband. These tags communicate with RTLS sensors placed throughout the facility, each denoting specific locations.
By interfacing with these sensors, we can instantly view the patient’s current location in the electronic health record. I can easily check my patient list in Epic to determine whether a patient is in their room, bathroom, or elsewhere. Knowing our patients’ locations enhances safety and optimizes staff efficiency. I no longer need to repeatedly search for patients; instead, I prioritize my rounds based on their location.
Additionally, this capability aids our staff in locating each other. If I need to find a nurse to discuss a patient, I can check the unit map to see their location, eliminating the need for phone calls and streamlining communication. The ability to locate each other efficiently is particularly crucial during activities like multidisciplinary rounds, which significantly impact patient care.
Moreover, asset tracking and management have been transformed with RTLS. Historically, clinical staff searched for equipment such as infusion pumps, wheelchairs, bladder scanners, and even sutures. By tagging equipment with RTLS tags, our staff can instantly locate the necessary items, allowing them to dedicate more time to patient care.
A central RTLS map on their desktop computers enables them to search for equipment, making their job easier. This also offers a high-level view of equipment inventory, helping us understand how much equipment we have in circulation. Previously, hospitals struggled with missing equipment, with estimates suggesting that 10% to 20% of equipment could not be found at any given time.
RTLS asset tracking has not only solved this issue but has also extended to the tracking of patients’ personal belongings. Items like hearing aids or dentures can be tagged with RTLS, preventing their misplacement during the patient’s stay. These small but valuable items are crucial to our patients, and avoiding their loss reduces disruptions and distress during their hospitalization.
Furthermore, we’ve employed RTLS for hand hygiene monitoring, a persistent challenge in healthcare. Monitoring hand hygiene compliance, particularly before and after patient care episodes, is essential. RTLS precision monitoring helps us identify the right locations for hand hygiene activities, ensuring they occur at the correct times. For instance, if I exit a patient’s room and walk several hallways to perform hand hygiene, I’ve missed crucial opportunities.
To address this, we utilize RTLS sensors in soap dispensers that integrate with our staff’s RTLS badges, creating an accurate hand hygiene monitoring system. Additionally, we use RTLS to monitor refrigerator temperatures for pharmacy medications and vaccinations, a novel use case with promising initial feedback.
I recently spoke with a nurse at our hospital who believes that RTLS has rekindled her passion for medicine. It may sound surprising, but she estimates that she now saves one to two hours per twelve-hour shift by spending less time searching for people and items. This improved efficiency allowed her to complete her charting more swiftly and return home on time, which had been a challenge for a long time.
Our ultimate goal is to empower our staff to provide the best care possible while finding joy in medicine once more. Given the demands placed on healthcare professionals today, it’s clear that restoring joy to their daily experiences is a meaningful achievement. These technologies are a means to that end, enabling our clinicians to focus on patient care and rekindle their passion for medicine.
