How IoT Will Enhance the Patient Experience, Safety, and Healthcare Efficiency in 2023
Improved patient experience with IoT. Find out how healthcare efficiency will be upgraded with tech.
As the pandemic has progressed over the last two years, the healthcare industry has witnessed a staffing shortage caused by burnout, violence, and a lack of clinical and operational resources. IoT technologies are proven to provide cost-effective solutions that enhance safety and ease operational burdens, discusses Scott Hondros, MHA, SCPM, VP of professional services at CenTrak.
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused significant disruption over the past two years. Although the healthcare industry has remained resilient, the pandemic has further amplified staff burnout, stressed the fragile healthcare labor market, and reduced resources required to deliver patient care. During the past year, the turnover rate for registered nurses increased by eight percent, growing the national average to 27%. Meanwhile, the average cost of turnover for a registered nurse in 2021 was $46,100. Staffing and supply shortages are continuing to impact the healthcare sector daily and, as a result, are forcing hospitals to limit the patients they are able to care for safely and effectively, which translates into a significant loss in overall revenue.
While healthcare facilities try to address these shortages, they are also facing an unprecedented increase in workplace violence. Even though violence against healthcare workers has been a growing concern long before COVID-19, the pandemic has greatly exacerbated the issue. Recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that nurses are five times more likely to experience violence than staff in any other industry. According to The Joint Commission, reducing workplace violence and burnout can improve patient care and decrease distress, job dissatisfaction, turnover, and costs. Healthcare leadership needs to ensure a safe workplace is a norm, not an exception.
IoT technologies such as Real-Time Location Systems (RTLS) are proven to provide cost-effective solutions that enhance safety and ease operational burdens. Advanced RTLS leverage active-radio frequency identification (RFID) technology and IoT-enabled tags, badges, and sensors to provide insight reliably and securely on exactly where to locate the right equipment, colleague, or patient, increasing workflow efficiencies at a time when healthcare professionals need to operate at the top of their license.
See More: IoT: Changing the Dynamics of Healthcare for Good
IoT Technology and Location Services in Healthcare
The roots of RTLS in clinical care go back to the early 2000s. At that time, the systems were sensors on the edge of the network sending back estimated location information. Fast forward to the present day, and we see the mission-critical use cases for IoT technologies and RTLS devices have significantly evolved at a truly incredible pace. Healthcare facilities now have real-time intel coming in for the exact location of assets, patients, and staff, which can be leveraged by various software solutions and integrated into existing healthcare systems such as nurse calls and electronic medical records to improve safety, automate workflow, and remove the burden of manual documentation. The advancements in AI and machine learning (ML) through the robotic process and intelligent automation are enhancing the data insights provided by RTLS, which in turn helps facilities better understand process optimization for greater efficiency and patient care.
Automation guarantees that critical steps are completed promptly and accurately instead of human error creating delays in the care journey. As automation technology continues to develop, it ensures the ability for faster completion of internal processes and administration steps.
Staff Duress Alerts: Invest in the Safety of Your Staff
The growing workplace violence and staffing shortages remain primary concerns and driving forces for many RTLS installations within the healthcare industry – a trend that’s only grown throughout 2022. Tensions continue to grow within healthcare facilities as 48 percent of U.S. registered nurses in a recent study reported increased workplace violence, while 69 percent reported that staffing shortages have worsened.
To better protect and support staff members, RTLS provides mobile duress solutions that prevent violent threats from escalating to dangerous events, all with the simple click of a button. The staff duress buttons are located directly on IoT-enabled staff wearables, allowing healthcare professionals easy access to subtly signals for help. Once initiated, the badge or other wearable immediately dispatches the alert with the precise location of the staff member to the appropriate computer workstation, monitor, and security dispatcher, as well as by email, text, and/or VoIP phone message. Increasing emergency response times prevent staff injury, creates a safer environment, and reduces the number of lost workdays, reducing further strain on the health system. Feedback from staff is commonly that they appreciate their organization’s leadership placing their safety as a top priority and making the investment to implement an IoT duress system.
Staff duress solutions can integrate with various traditional security systems, video management systems, access control, and mass notification systems. Staff duress functionality is a simple add-on for healthcare facilities that already leverage an automated nurse call system. For enhanced location capabilities, consider RTLS duress solutions that offer clinical-grade locating (CGL).
Asset Management Is a Win-Win
One-third of nurses report spending an hour or more during an average shift hunting for equipment necessary for patient care. RTLS provides real-time room and bay-level map views and precise lists of equipment, status, and location. By implementing RTLS, medical staff can locate critical equipment using IoT-enabled tags within minutes – saving precious time, reducing stress, and ensuring patients receive timely care.
More advanced IoT-enabled location services provide a centralized portal on mobile devices to manage requests and locate mobile medical equipment. Staff appreciate being able to quickly find equipment or submit and track requests from any location on the floor. A centralized portal can automate assignments related to Periodic Automatic Replenishment (PAR)-level inventory management. Supply chain managers and administrators can use the system’s back-end to monitor PAR levels in real time and use its advanced reporting and analytics capabilities to identify inefficient workflows or inventory utilization, especially beneficial during supply shortages.
Workflow Automation Assists Staff and Patients
Lessening nurses’ workloads is a critical aspect of combating burnout and promoting staff retention, and healthcare leaders will find that investing in nurses makes sense for the facility’s bottom line. When RTLS solutions are properly implemented, it enables healthcare organizations to analyze data to find opportunities for improvement, such as shortening patient wait time, proactively preparing for the busiest patient times, and increasing hand-hygiene compliance, as well as automating workflows, like biomed reprocessing and nurse call response.
To achieve the best patient care and workplace satisfaction, healthcare professionals need access to platforms that automate workflow to alleviate the burden of manual documentation, which can often be delayed or potentially inaccurate, and offer proactive communications to each other, patients, and family members. Workflow platforms that leverage RTLS data can keep tabs on key patient flow metrics and ensure staff know where all patients are in their care journey.
Advanced workflow platforms automatically run in the background and produce a major impact by eliminating non-value-added tasks and offering patients proactive status updates and estimated wait times, family text messaging to automatically keep loved ones informed, and staff views on display boards that give an easy-to-read layout of each patient’s location, the time they’ve been at the facility, the time they’ve been waiting for a provider, and which staff member is currently in their room or was most recently with them. This ensures teams are on the same page with up-to-the-minute visibility to continuously measure interactions, reduce bottlenecks, and consider best staffing choices. Real-time patient information and clear staff communications keep operations in any complex healthcare environment running smoothly with high efficiency.
See More: Why Healthcare IT Leaders Shouldn’t Ignore Repeated Warnings About Cyberattacks
IoT Technology Benefits Healthcare
Over the last decade, RTLS has progressed significantly as AI and ML have developed and taken root in healthcare. We’re seeing significant proof of improvements on both the clinical and operational side within facilities that leverage and optimize their RTLS initiatives. As RTLS becomes more engrained, the industry will see further increases in predictive data, automated administrative needs, and reductions in cost.
By reducing manual documentation in the coming year, facilities can reallocate care time, reduce response times, and experience significant and quantifiable cost savings. Automating non-value-added tasks will enable clinicians to spend more time being clinicians. This continued progression will be a win-win for patients, their families, healthcare professionals, and facility administrators in 2023.
Have you noticed any improvement in healthcare lately? Tell us what you think about the role of IoT in healthcare on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Image Source: Shutterstock
MORE HEALTH TECH
