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The Albert Einstein Healthcare Network in Philadelphia has deployed an asset and patient tracking solution in its three Emergency Departments (EDs) to help staff increase efficiency and improve patient care. The hospital uses a real-time location system from Patient Care Technology Systems (PCTS) to map the location of critical equipment, staff and patients throughout the department.
Albert Einstein Medical Center is a 509-bed facility, and its emergency department is a level 1 trauma center with 48 critical care beds. The hospital uses the PCTS Amelior ED patient care system for electronic charting, computerized provider order entry and clinical decision support. It's largest ED, which sees more than 76,000 patients a year, has deployed the Amelior EDTracker passive tracking system to provide location data on equipment and patients, and to help medical staff provide care to patients.
Einstein has been using the system since 2003, and was one of the first emergency departments in the U.S. to deploy a passive tracking system.
Faced with rising patient volumes, the hospital expanded its emergency department to improve patient flow by re-organizing the department into three contiguous "pods" along with an urgent care center. Tracking patient care milestones was difficult because of the manual data entry required, so Einstein turned to wireless technology to help better track patient information.
"We were doubling our care capacity and had a huge need to communicate information throughout the emergency department," says Dr. Albert Villarin, chief medical informatics officer at the hospital. "The only solution that would meet our needs was an automated, passive tracking system.
Patients and staff wear badges that transmit wireless location data to ceiling-mounted sensors located throughout the facility. Medical devices such as EKG, ultrasound and X-ray equipment are also tagged with these wireless devices. The PCTS software instantly communicates the stage of care for every patient, and displays the information in map views on the computers used in the department.
The system also records interactions between staff and mobile medical equipment, and employees can easily locate critical equipment using the system. When staff members want to check on the status of a patient or a piece of equipment, they can view the information in a list display that looks similar to an airport flight display.
"Caregivers can view information on every patient," Villarin says. "The administration loves the system because they can see where all of the bottlenecks are, and work to address those issues."
The hospital was able to eliminate manual data entry and the tracking grease board that it had previously used track patient status. After the implementation, the hospital saw a 24% increase in ED volume and hospital admissions, but was still able to reduce the rate of patients walking out without treatment from over 5% to between 1% and 2%, reduce its diversion rate by nearly 90%, and reduce the average length of stay in the department.
Within the first month the tracking system was live, staff were relying on it for day-to-day patient care. "We're now graduating residents that look for other hospitals with similar tracking systems," Villarin says. "They are so used to this method of operating, that they miss the system when they go to other hospitals."
The hospital is now in the final stages of deploying the Amelior electronic medical record at the medical center. Einstein's two community hospitals have gone live with the tracking system as well.
Currently, Einstein uses infrared-based technology for its wireless tracking, but plans to migrate to an ultrasound-based positioning system from Sonitor Technologies that will integrate with the PCTS system.
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