Mobile medical equipment is essential to patient care. Whether it is an intravenous pump, a heart monitor, or a wheelchair, virtually all patients are dependent on one or more mobile devices during a hospital stay.
Unfortunately, hospitals often lack effective tools to properly manage and distribute mobile devices. A common but expensive solution is to store equipment, hoping that they will always be available when needed. Yet, nurses often spend 20 to 30 minutes per shift to hunt for intravenous pumps. Some equipment such as wheelchairs simply disappear from the hospital.
The impact on patient care, staff productivity and the cost to the hospital is enormous, especially at a time when hospitals and biomedical engineers are challenged to do more with less. Why is it that despite the practice of over-inventory, equipment is rarely available when needed? How is it that although several additional units are purchased or leased, often annually, in an effort to replace equipment units that are often hidden in a room or locker; these new units are in turn lost in the system or remain under-used, well below the 40% utilization rate?
Breaking this cycle provides an important business opportunity for health care organizations to achieve significant gains, freeing up time for nurses to meet the objectives of patient care and better manage costs.
Purelink helps hospitals locate mobile equipment and reduce surplus inventory. By associating a location tag to each equipment unit, the utilization rate of mobile equipment increases to 80%.
By understanding how mobile equipment are managed and used in the organization, then by mapping the current processes with the right RTLS services of Purelink products, hospitals with 200 beds can:
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