How Real-time Locating Systems Are Transforming Healthcare

The use of real-time locating systems (RTLS) for loss prevention and security is well established, but those aren’t the only ways these systems can be employed. They can also be utilized to combat the healthcare burnout epidemic. With RTLS, we can deepen our understanding of workflows and make better decisions to help reduce staff turnover and ensure high-quality patient care.

RTLS overview

RTLS is an easily understood concept: You use technology to identify where something or someone is located and where they go. Normally, when discussing RTLS in healthcare environments, you might think of patients, who are given bracelets for security purposes — such as elopement prevention. But here we’re exploring the use of RTLS to analyze workflows.

In this case, staff members could wear or carry special ID tags, which the systems can aid in contact tracing, staff duress, patient workflow, and rounding automation. By utilizing RTLS, you gain better business intelligence around your hospital’s workflow.

Workflow analytics

RTLS can provide important information about the staff’s current working conditions. Where are individual employees usually working? How often are multiple staff members called to perform a task when one individual could easily manage it? How far are employees expected to move during their workdays? What areas are not receiving enough attention? These are just some of the questions RTLS can help answer.

Analyzing workflows ultimately comes down to determining what isn’t working, where the inefficiencies are, and what is causing the most stress and exhaustion for employees so you can adjust how these tasks are approached. Are the same nurses being sent across the facility multiple times a day to deliver samples instead of being assigned to treat patients? Are certain tasks being given too much attention and others not enough? Is the way duties are divided forcing your staff to travel long distances and preventing them from having an opportunity to sit down? Are patients left to wait while staff members spend time performing menial tasks? These are all issues RTLS can help you resolve once you identify the problems.

Informed decisions

Studying data from RTLS can be game-changing for making informed decisions about workflows and hospital staff. By understanding how tasks are being handled and where they occur in relation to each other, you can adjust staff assignments, ease unnecessary stress, prevent sending too many employees to address a minor problem, and more. Once you have the necessary information, it’s much easier to act on it and help prevent further exhaustion among your staff.

One RTLS platform, Sonitor Sense, can be used not only to analyze workflows but also to address problems in real time. This ultrasound-based system allows you to cancel or escalate a nurse call, inform staff if a patient’s needs change, maintain awareness of what’s happening in the operating room, provide an easy way to signal for help, and quickly locate someone in distress.

Increasing value

While RTLS is an effective tool for security and the prevention of missing equipment or patients, using it to understand how your hospital works and where you can optimize workflows may offer even more value. The benefits include driving operational efficiency, improving employee and patient safety, and increasing staff and patient satisfaction. With more hospitals being impacted by worker burnout, the importance and value RTLS can bring to healthcare facilities will only continue to grow.

Learn more about the benefits of real-time locating systems in healthcare at trlsystems.com.