Kent Hospital is first in New England to introduce state-of-the-art electronic system to monitor speed admissions process
Challenge
Ever been in a hospital emergency department or in your doctor’s office and waited to learn when or if you could be admitted to a hospital bed? In today’s busy healthcare environment, old style manual tracking systems can result in significant delay.
Solution
Kent Hospital, the state’s largest community hospital, has become the first hospital in Rhode Island to introduce state-of-the-art technology that displays all its beds on a four-foot color plasma TV screen and uses computer software to link the emergency department (or an incoming request from a doctor’s office) with the hospital’s admitting and housekeeping departments. The software, called the [PreAdmitTracking™ with the electronic bedboard®], is manufactured by Teletracking Technologies of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Results
The right kind of bed can be reserved as soon as the potential need for an admission is identified. Housekeeping is then contacted electronically to ready the room. The housekeeper tells the computer when the room is ready and the TV screen shows a green light for that bed. The computer then automatically pages the emergency department, the admitting office and the accepting nursing floor so that report can be given and the patient transported to their room.
“Kent operates the second busiest emergency department in Rhode Island,” said ED Administrative Director Jean Butler, RN. “With some 60,000 ED visits a year and many of them requiring admission, traditional paper and telephone systems just can’t keep pace with the need. The new system lets our unit secretary identify a patient in the bed tracking system, request a bed, confirm the assignment and arrange for housekeeping to ready the room, all without a single phone call.”
The Director of Kent’s Testing and Admitting Center (TAC) Denise Hunter Behm, RHIA, noted that her staff has seen a reduction of as much as 75 percent in the number of phone calls during a routine day of bed assignments. “Now,” she says, “our bed managers can concentrate on assigning the most appropriate floor for our patients instead of answering questions on available beds and placements. The plasma TV screen shows us all the information.”
The screen shows which rooms are occupied by male or female patients, what special precautions may be in place and the number of critical or special needs beds available throughout the hospital. Behm explained that, “Once our bed managers acknowledge the incoming computer bed request and assign a bed, the software takes over until it is time for the charge nurse of the floor to actually accept the patient.” What happens in between? That’s where housekeeping and transport come in.
Benefit
“Earlier this year, our staff began using a related piece of software [BedTracking®] that tracks overall bed availability and monitors the cleaning process throughout the hospital,” said Environmental Services Manager Steven Bailey. “We’re getting better turnaround in our regular cleaning needs while also reducing the flow of phone calls back and forth.” Bailey’s department also handles in-house transport and uses another segment of the software to move patients from one service to another. “Our transporters use alpha-numeric beepers as they move around the hospital. We’re seeing more timely pick up of patients from their rooms, transport to surgery or testing and back to their rooms once the procedures are complete. Again, phone calls are reduced and additional resources can be deployed more efficiently in times of peak need,” he said.
One nurse manager who has been especially pleased with the new software is Joseph Rocheleau, R.N. “We have a very busy unit, with orthopedics, stroke and other acute needs patients,” he explained. “The new pre-admitting system has greatly reduced delays in getting patients to their beds as well as reduced the number of phone calls that it used to take to get patients placed. Charge nurses on the designated floors are automatically paged to alert them of incoming admissions. Unit staff can then gear up for the patient. When the computer senses all is in place, it pages the charge nurse again to contact the Emergency Department or a TAC bed manager to take clinical information needed to accept the patient. It really helps us to balance our resources and manage time more efficiently.”
The wall size TV screen has been in place for only a few weeks and already it is meeting with very positive feedback. One bed manager noted that using the old style paper and telephone system never allowed her to get a real picture of overall occupancy and bed availability.
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