Can RTLS Be Used to Ensure Patient Safety?
Real-time locating systems (RTLS) with high accuracy and immediate location updates can effectively enhance patient safety by monitoring hand hygiene compliance, ensuring nurse rounding protocols, tracking the cleanliness of mobile medical equipment, and managing equipment availability in healthcare settings.
Can real-time locating systems (RTLS) be used to effectively monitor compliance with standard patient safety procedures and protocols? The answer is "yes," but only when the installed RTLS has supreme accuracy and near-immediate system location update speeds. Inaccurate (zonal) and delayed (stale) data provide little value. Assuming the RTLS system is highly accurate and works in real-time, here are five applications where a high-performance RTLS can be used effectively to ensure patient safety and high-quality care:
1. Hand Hygiene Compliance
Almost every hospital has protocols to ensure that physicians and clinicians wash their hands properly before interacting with patients. Traditionally, hospitals have used self-reporting systems or "secret shoppers" to monitor compliance, but these manual methods are subjective and inaccurate. RTLS applications can monitor real interactions between patients and hand washing dispensers, providing automatic, accurate, and reliable reporting.
2. Nurse Rounding
Studies show that systematic nurse rounding programs reduce patient falls, decrease call light usage, and increase patient satisfaction. Hospitals have invested heavily in consulting to implement rounding initiatives. RTLS technology with room/bed-level accuracy can monitor whether nurses are following rounding protocols and proactively alert nurses when it is time to round on a particular patient.
3. Dirty Mobile Medical Equipment Surveillance
RTLS systems can monitor the location of mobile medical equipment, such as infusion pumps, in near real-time at the room level. This visibility allows business logic to determine if equipment has moved directly from one patient room to another without passing through a designated cleaning area. Such situations can trigger alarms via email or text message and cause the asset tag on the equipment to flash an LED light or emit an audible alarm.
4. Par Levels
Quick access to mobile medical equipment is essential for patient safety. RTLS technology with reliable room/bed-level accuracy allows hospitals to monitor par levels of clean equipment, ensuring that clean and ready equipment is available and nearby when needed by a patient.
5. Equipment Readiness
All mobile medical equipment is on a preventative maintenance schedule to ensure it is safe for patient use. If a hospital's clinical engineering department cannot easily locate equipment that needs regular maintenance or is subject to a manufacturer recall, patient safety may be compromised. RTLS asset tracking applications provide technicians with increased visibility to quickly and easily locate medical equipment, ensuring it is always in safe working order for patients.
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CenTrak's RTLS technology enhances healthcare facilities' effectiveness and efficiency by providing real-time location tracking of assets, patients, and staff, along with solutions for asset management, hand hygiene compliance, and patient and staff protection.
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Can RTLS be Used to Ensure Patient Safety and Quality Care?
High-performance real-time locating systems (RTLS) with supreme accuracy and immediate location updates can effectively ensure patient safety and quality care by accurately monitoring hand hygiene compliance, nurse rounding adherence, and the proper cleaning of mobile medical equipment, thereby overcoming the limitations of traditional subjective reporting methods.
The Secret To Gaining Staff Buy In For RTLS
The article explains that gaining staff buy-in for Real-Time Locating Systems (RTLS) in healthcare hinges on clear communication to dispel myths and demonstrate benefits such as enhanced staff protection through discreet emergency alerts, improved efficiency via accurate location tracking, and better documentation of response times, all of which contribute to safer, more efficient patient care environments.