Together, the hospitals have over 1,100 licensed hospital beds, support over 42,000 surgical procedures and admit more than 55,000 patients annually. Christiana Care will integrate the Awarepoint Real-time Location System (RTLS) to provide automatic location data capture to the Amelior Tracker end-user software. Awarepoint serves its U.S. healthcare customers through its exclusive distribution partnership with Skytron.
Christiana Care has been a workflow automation partner with PCTS since 2004. Throughout the last five years, Christiana Care has implemented Amelior EDTracker® in both Christiana Hospital and Wilmington Hospital. The software's impact has allowed the combined emergency departments (ED) with over 160,000 ED visits a year, to achieve 100% real-time location of patients, as well as decrease wait time and increase patient and staff satisfaction.
Despite a continued census increase, the overall emergency department length of stay (LOS) decreased by an average of 36 minutes for admitted patients and 45 minutes for patients treated and released. The average LOS for low acuity patients reduced from more than 2 hours to less than 60 minutes. Low acuity patients leaving without treatment (LWOT) decreased from 4.5 percent to 2.5 percent. Related to reductions in key wait time intervals as well as patient perception of how well they were kept informed, patient satisfaction levels among low acuity patients rose from the 73rd percentile to the 99th percentile on the Press Ganey scale. Equally important, staff satisfaction improved with respect to knowledge of patient location, diagnostic results availability, and emergency room status. Staff safety was enhanced through the staff/patient encounter summary for contamination and infectious agents. Overall, the implementation of Amelior EDTracker has contributed to strong staff retention.
Installation of the enterprise-wide asset management system will focus on optimizing the utilization of mobile assets, decreasing lost and/or stolen assets, and eliminating unnecessary future replacement investments. The Amelior Tracker solution is part of the Amelior Enterprise Visibility Suite(TM) which comprises department to facility-wide software solutions and services designed to more efficiently and safely orchestrate patient care through the real-time visualization of patient flow. Hospitals can scale their implementations by the entities they wish to track (movable medical equipment, patients, staff), purpose (asset management, patient flow, infection control) and by the scope of hospital workflow (acute care, inpatient floors, outpatient services, enterprise-wide).
At Christiana Care, PCTS will implement an active-RFID locating network from business partner Awarepoint who provides location awareness through a ZigBee-based wireless sensor network utilizing sensors which are deployed in standard electrical outlets. This 100% wireless infrastructure enables quick installation without disrupting patient care throughout the entire enterprise. Awarepoint tags broadcast low power radio messages which enable users to quickly locate specific equipment or people and provide information about their movement and status. The installation will provide true hospital-wide awareness -- not only room-level, but persistent accuracy across the entire hospital footprint.
"Christiana Care's utilization of the PCTS automatic tracking and workflow solutions have been critical to our mission of providing a better way to deliver care over the last five years," said Alan Lipschultz, Director of Clinical Engineering for Christiana Care. "It was a natural choice for us to reach out to PCTS in regards to an ever increasing need to manage our valuable assets throughout our two facilities. An accurate, real-time visualization of our assets will provide true hospital-wide awareness. I'm confident that the system will improve workflow, assist in regulatory compliance and provide cost reduction opportunities."
"We look forward to our continued, successful partnership with Christiana Care. Christiana Care continues to be the gold standard in their implementation of real-time workflow solutions for health care facilities and their commitment to innovation and quality care," said Tony Marsico, president and CEO of PCTS. "The return on investment Christiana Care will realize by increasing utilization of their existing equipment, reductions in rentals and shrinkage (lost, stolen, misplaced equipment), offers the potential for tremendous bottom-line savings."
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