Managing the everyday operations of a healthcare facility is no simple task. In times when resources are limited and medical staffs are becoming smaller and smaller, having the tools to maximize efficiency while providing an excellent patient experience, is needed more than ever. Putting technology solutions to work can aid in every step from checking in new patients with ID wristbands to managing their care with the correct treatments and medication. Optimizing your operations will result in better and shorter stays for your patients.
A patient’s length of stay depends on effective patient tracking tools and the orchestration of their plan of care. Length of stay has a direct impact on capacity management and, ultimately, costs and revenue. A robust patient tracking and administration solution enables patients to flow at their best possible rate with respect to service times, quality, safety and resource consumption. Improve your daily operations and patient care with technology that works for you.
What are the Key Benefits of a Patient Tracking and Administration System?
Provide the best patient experience with an integrated solution that provides the benefits of:
- Improved Patient Care – Manage processes more efficiently to reduce patient wait times.
- Resource Management – Gain visibility into patient status to schedule and allocate resources
efficiently. - Productivity – Spend less time on administrative task and more on patient care.
- Feedback – Enable the right decisions with current information captured in real-time.
What is Patient Tracking and Administration?
Healthcare facilities are one of the environments where tracking and managing information, at a very detailed level, is imperative. Ensuring that patients are always matched with the correct medical history, medications and doctor’s instructions is critical to providing them with the right care. The healthcare industry is rapidly adopting barcoded or RFID-tagged wrist bands, patient records and medications to be able to accurately and rapidly make sure the right information is at hand. Accurate data that is easily accessible creates a seamless and quick patient experience while maximizing the effectiveness of your staff.
Complete and accurate data also leads to complete and accurate billing at check-out, because all the products and services have been captured when they were administered. Every organization needs to be profitable to continue operations. With a more efficient tracking system you can reduce your operation costs, decrease the length of stay for patients and optimize your resource usage. Enabling your staff with the right tools allows them to do more with less.
Staff shortages and double shifts are common in healthcare environments, where doctors and overburdened nurses must continue to provide responsive care to patients. Wireless patient monitoring allows healthcare providers the freedom to handle multiple duties without being tethered to a single monitoring location. Staff can remotely program monitors and pumps or even be alerted instantly to changes in a patient’s condition. By utilizing Wi-Fi enabled mobile devices specifically designed for healthcare, you can improve the speed and quality of medical treatment, even when there is a shortage of caregivers.
A properly integrated solution offers high speed, accurate and secure data gathering so that healthcare providers know where their patients’ progress stands at all times. Patient tracking and administration encompasses many functions within a facility including:
- Patient check-in and identification
- Care and medication administration
- Accessing patient history
- Vitals tracking
- Services recording
- Asset usage and allocation
Having the rights tools, from wristband printers to mobile computers, for your staff is essential for a productive patient tracking solution. We can help ensure you have everything that is required by your specific application needs and HIMSS software (Meditech, Cerner, McKesson, Epic or CareFusion). Provide the most efficient and effective patient care possible.
When putting together an effective patient tracking and administration system there are a few key questions to answer:
- What HIMSS software are you currently using, if any?
- How many concurrent users will you have?
- Do you have wireless infrastructure in place already?
- Will you need voice capabilities on the mobile devices?
- Will your staff be using a cart on wheels (COW) or mobile computers? Both?
- Does your medication and equipment have barcodes on them currently?
What are the Components of a Patient Tracking and Administration System?
Patient tracking and administration systems utilize a combination of 4 core components:
- Mobile Computer – Nurses and staff are constantly on the move and a mobile device is ideal for
providing the information they need in the palm of their hand. There are healthcare specific models
with disinfectant-ready housing to withstand in any healthcare environment. - Wristband Printer – Patients need to be easily identified in order to care for them properly. Issuing
wristbands with unique barcodes on them is a simple yet effective solution for patient identification. - Wireless Infrastructure – In healthcare, information needs to be accessible at all times and updated
in real-time. Having a robust wireless infrastructure is required to support all your bandwidth needs
without ever going down. - Label Printer – Labels are used throughout a healthcare facility to ID anything from tools and
equipment to medication. Being able to print on demand at a high quality is a basic part of any
management system.
