News & Events
October 21, 2009
TELETRACKING ACQUIRES SPECIALIZED TRANSFER CENTER TECHNOLOGY
Streamlining Communications; Process Redesign Helps Manage Patient Referrals
PITTSBURGH, PA, Oct. 21, 2009 _____ -- TeleTracking Technologies today announced the acquisition of a specialized Transfer Center software technology that it will offer and incorporate into its patient flow software portfolio, and consulting service practice, specifically around Transfer and Referral Center design. This product will help multi-specialty hospitals more rapidly and efficiently accept critically ill patients from outlying facilities.
Nearly 500 hospitals throughout the country act as referral hubs, or transfer centers, designed to provide specialty care to patients who cannot be treated adequately at their current healthcare facility.
With the addition of the transfer center software to its portfolio, TeleTracking can now offer hospitals the ability to develop and streamline their transfer center operations. This offering can be provided as a standalone product or incorporated into the TeleTracking Avanti Patient Flow consulting division’s Transfer Center design engagements. Ultimately, any referral center can benefit from this single, efficient electronic access point to streamline the placing of patients from outlying facilities.
“As specialization and competition among doctors and hospitals increases, sending patients to the right hospitals for the best medical care has never been more important” said Anthony Sanzo, President and CEO of TeleTracking. “The challenge of following the right referral protocols, in an appropriate timeframe, is difficult in a manual environment. It requires multiple phone calls, long wait times, frustrated physicians and nurses, not to mention critically ill patients. This acquisition allows us to codify a set of processes that are repeatable, documentable and reliable, in order to meet a patient’s clinical needs.”
Beginning in 2008, the TeleTracking Avanti Patient Flow consulting division developed a specialized process model to help hospitals design a centralized Transfer Center. This approach helps hospitals better manage referral and transfer admissions, increase transfer volumes, improve physician satisfaction, analyze and respond to referral patterns and provide patients with rapid initiation of life-saving care. The addition of this software will further streamline and track the flow of communications necessary to smoothly and efficiently accept transfers and referrals.
“Hospitals know the value that patient flow automation offers for maximizing bed capacity through efficient bed turnover,” said Lisa Romano, TeleTracking’s Chief Nursing Officer and Vice President in charge of Avanti. “Now, the same principles and technology can be applied to Transfer Center operations. Hospitals can maintain and expand strategic physician referrals, and patient transfers are rapidly facilitated to ensure their placement into an available, clinically appropriate service line.”
TeleTracking is now selling this product in its current form, and will begin integrating this technology into its market leading patient flow software solutions.
About TeleTracking
TeleTracking Technologies is the world-leading producer of automated solutions that relieve hospital overcrowding by improving patient flow. The Pittsburgh-based firm has over 1700 Capacity Management Solutions™ installed in more than 800 of the best-known hospitals and health systems in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. TeleTracking was first to recognize patient flow as a “continuum of actions and activities involving many people.” It launched the automated patient flow industry in 1991 with the first automated bed turnover solution and has since introduced a number of industry-standard firsts, including the first digitized large screen bedboard and the first two handheld solutions -- which give managers on the move real-time information at their fingertips so they can continually assess patient placement options.
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