• Are your patient care “wait times” difficult to measure and affecting patient satisfaction?
• Does your ED patient tracking board always display correct and up to date patient location?
• Do staff members spend time away from patient care searching for necessary equipment and clinicians?
• Are you concerned with staff safety due to an increase in abuse and violence at the ED?

Emergency Departments (ED) have become larger and more complex due to overcrowding and closure of many emergency rooms.  Hospital initiatives for improving care delivery through efficient management of the location and status of patients within the ED is meant to offset unacceptable waiting times for care.  Easy access to available staff and equipment is essential to a streamlined process flow within the department.

In addition, a recent Emergency Department Violence Surveillance Study* identified an average physical abuse rate of 11% and an average verbal abuse rate of 43.8% among ED staff, raising the awareness of the need for staff safety initiatives.

Solution Highlights

• Real-time patient location updates to existing ED tracking boards improves communication workflow as the patient moves through the ED, while reducing manual data entry requirements
• Staff efficiency and satisfaction is improved through the reduction of manual data entry for patient location and status updates
• Patient elopement events can be quickly identified and communicated prior to the patient leaving the facility, preventing possible harm to themselves or others
• Real-time alerts provide proactive response to waiting patients
• Staff duress events are triggered through simple button clicks on a badge; with immediate identification of the staff member and the staff member’s location.
• Search times are minimized through real-time visibility of critical equipment
• Analysis of patient-staff interaction and room utilization times based on accurate real-time data
• When combined with the AeroScout Asset Management and Condition Monitoring solutions, AeroScout can enables improved equipment utilization, loss prevention and automated temperature/humidity monitoring

Footnote:
* Emergency Department Violence Surveillance Study, August 2010, Emergency nurses Association, Institute for emergency Nursing Research