The Health Care RFID Blog

As HIMSS10 came to a close today there was a lot of buzz involving new technologies that can achieve measurable value and help improve care, reduce costs and minimize risks in the industry. Hospitals and other healthcare organizations are in major need of achieving “real” ROI from the software and hardware tools that they will be implementing in an effort to reach their 2015 goal for compliance. It is important for organizations to look at implementing the right technologies that can help them sustain ROI over time.

Patient tracking seemed to be a major buzz at HIMSS10. Patient tracking is a more unique solution than asset tracking in that it involves moving assets. (Patients) A patient tracking solution consists of granularity and a much faster refresh rate than an asset tracking solution. If a quick refresh rate and a high level of granularity are absent then the patients will be out of sight before the appropriate staff is notified. Dynamic Computer Corporation offers a variety of solutions using RFID (Radio frequency identification) and RTLS (real-time location systems) technologies that can automatically update location and status information of patients in as little as 3-second intervals. Healthcare organizations have options when implementing RTLS and RFID systems into their infrastructure. There are both wired and Wi-Fi technologies available to implement a successful patient tracking solution. Wi-Fi solutions use Wi-Fi-enabled tags that interact and communicate with access points within a building to define their location over an existing 802.11 wireless infrastructure. Wired solutions use IR (infrared) and RFID technologies that communicate to determine the ultimate location of a patient in real-time. Much like a wireless access point, wired solutions can either use IR and/or RF antennas to communicate with a tag in real time as a patient moves about the facility.

Another topic buzzing around HIMSS10 was how to get smaller hospitals and healthcare organizations on board with implementing EHRs. Data standardization is extremely important and will need to be clearly defined and seamless in order for the industry as a whole to achieve meaningful use objectives. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, as we all know, includes $19 billion in grants and loans available to healthcare organizations in an effort to aid in implementing an infrastructure and processes to improve care, reduce costs and minimize risks. Along with funding comes choosing the right solution for each individual organizations needs. Smaller clinics with less staff will have a problem keeping up with manual data entry processes. RFID and RTLS solutions can eliminate the need for manual entry and let the staff focus on providing quality patient care and sustaining financial stability and compliance with standardization.

With emerging technologies come advantages and disadvantages. It is important to determine what individual requirements fit your organizations needs when evaluating each solution. Dynamic has the ability to customize a solution that will not only take into consideration your current pains but will also help you plan for your future needs.

In the last few days there has been a lot of talk in the health care industry surrounding President Obama’s most recent health care proposal.  The year-long effort, and the fourth proposal, is focused on making health care more affordable, making health insurers more accountable, expanding healthcare coverage to all Americans and making the health system sustainable. A large portion of the proposal focuses on reforming health care insurance—designed to reduce the cost of healthcare for patients.  Moreover, Title III of the proposal, “Improving the Quality and Efficiency of Health Care,” includes incentivizing doctors, nurses and hospitals to improve care and reduce unnecessary errors that harm patients.

While the government focuses on roping in costs and incentives to improve patient care, what are healthcare providers doing to help meet these objectives?

Some of the most costly healthcare issues are healthcare acquired infections (HAIs). Annually, HAIs are estimated to affect more than 1.7 million patients, kill 99,000 patients, and cost between $35 billion and $45 billion. Under the new federal reimbursement policy, payment for care required as a result of HAIs will no longer be approved, making prevention urgently important to the bottom line. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), HAIs are a top 10 cause of death in America.

One of the simplest ways HAIs can be prevented is by medical personnel properly washing their hands. 

While Washington works on the insurance issues, health care providers are looking to health information technology (HIT), including RFID solutions, to help reduce cost, minimize risks and improve patient care now.  One of the best ways to prevent HAIs is hand-washing, and one of the easiest ways to ensure compliance is to back it with technology.

The hand-hygiene solution provided by Dynamic, built on Versus’ IR-RF technology, consists of badges, ceiling sensors and soap/sanitizer dispensers retrofitted with sensors. When a person dispenses soap or sanitizer, the sensor reads the ID badge and timestamps the occurrence.  If a badged person approaches a patient prior to handwashing, the system alerts the individual audibly. The information is stored in a database for reporting and is easily integrated with other systems.

The system effectively addresses hand-hygiene compliance by automatically capturing hand-washing data in the background, 24-7. It alerts staff on compliance in real time, allowing hospitals to prevent adverse events before they occur. The system tracks who washed their hands and when. 

Other RFID and RTLS solutions, such as patient tracking, medication tracking and lab tracking can help bring down the costs of healthcare by ensuring costly errors are not made. Let Washington worry about insurance reform and healthcare providers can focus on how to reduce costs, minimize risks and most important, improve patient care with HIT.

HIMSS and ASQ announce 16 “Stories of Success!” case studies

HIMSS and ASQ (American Society for Quality) recently announced the selection of 16 real-world and peer-reviewed case studies that have been selected as Stories of Success! Introduced in October 2009, the Stories of Success! case-study program showcases outstanding accomplishments in the adoption and use of information technology to achieve improved patient safety, quality, effectiveness and efficiency. The call for case studies highlights the fulfillment of the national priorities established by the National Priorities Partnership (NPP) and The Joint Commission’s National Patient Safety Goals (NPSG).  Is your healthcare organization a success story?

Designed to emphasize the link between improvements in healthcare quality and patient safety and health IT, HIMSS and ASQ chose those who are using IT every day and could identify how technology helps support the six priorities of the National Priorities Partnership and the Joint Commission’s national patient safety goals and priorities.

What are the everyday IT applications that are enabling these healthcare organizations to be recognized as a success story? For one organization, it’s RFID. A few weeks ago we highlighted how RFID can help healthcare providers meet the National Patient Safety Goals in our blog post, “What will JCAHO’s National Patient Safety Goals inspire you to do?” These Success Stories! further emphasize how RFID directly improves patient care by minimizing risks and reducing costs.

What RFID solution would benefit your organization the most? A systems integrator can help you identify where you can reap the most benefits and address the areas that need the most work. As featured in the RFID case study, it is important to start with a targeted area when implementing an RFID solution and identifying what the challenges are and how they can be met before rolling out system wide. Make your organization a success story with RFID!

The industry is undergoing significant changes in a short period of time. However, there’s a difference between ‘knowing’ the trends, and ‘understanding’ them, the latter, which requires context and an action plan for applying them to one’s business. The paired adoption of EMR and RFID/RTLS systems holds the highest potential for reducing costs, minimizing risks and improving patient care, and it is this understanding that can drive the industry toward a truly interoperable model.

No surprise, then, that pairing the adoption of an EMR system with RTLS/RFID solutions helps to address many of the top trends identified in the Healthcare Technology Online above.

·         One way RFID can work efficiently with EMRs is to eliminate the need to manually enter data into the system. A change or pause in work flow is not required in order to enter and share patient information, nor will it add extra duties to staff and clinicians. Manual data entry is time consuming, expensive and prone to many of the same types of human error as found in paper records.

·         A second benefit to pairing the two technologies is accuracy, which is critical to EMR success. Automatic identification and data capture (AIDC) obtained through use of RFID solutions is accurate without requiring human intervention and seamlessly integrates with EMR systems. The best systems are accurate 100 percent of the time, with no missed events and no false positives, and they accept information in real time.

·         A third benefit is real-time updates. Most EMRs are accessible through Web browsers. Delivering information into the record immediately means that individual patient and facility summary data are available both through EMR systems and through the AIDC system dashboards. These executive dashboards allow clinicians to make informed decisions based upon the most-current patient and facility data.

As staff and budgets continue to be slashed throughout the sector, HIT is not just important – it is paramount in order to do more – and better — with less. By staying ahead of industry trends and working with the best-in-class vendors, Dynamic is able to provide cutting-edge technology and precise solutions to help healthcare providers meet both predicted – and unpredictable — challenges on the horizon  in the year ahead.

While no one knows exactly what the future holds, this time of year experts in all industries do their best to predict the trends for the year ahead. Identifying and predicting trends is something we at Dynamic do day-in and day-out for our clients. Being on the forefront of emerging technologies and the rapidly evolving marketplace allows us to identify industry issues early on, and select proven RFID partners to address them before they become full-scale problems for our customers.

Still, we are not alone in predicting that 2010 is going to be a paramount year for HIT implementations. Why? Primarily because of healthcare reform and nearly $20 billion in government stimulus funds allotted to go towards healthcare IT initiatives as part of The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA).  What technology healthcare providers allocate their budgets to and how they take advantage of government incentives will be the key to reducing costs, minimizing risks and improving patient care.  So what are the trends in healthcare IT for 2010? According to an article published by Healthcare Technology Online, the top 10 healthcare IT trends to watch in 2010 are:

1. Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) will gain momentum
2. Personal Health Records (PHRs) earn legitimacy
3. Cost containment is a paramount
4. Alternative care delivery models emerge
5. War waged on Medicare fraud
6. Increased focus on outbreak preparedness
7. Patient safety initiatives intensify
8. Healthcare professionals in short supply
9. Storage and business continuity concerns abound
10. Physician groups join healthcare systems

Nearly all of these trends directly align with the benefits RFID and RTLS solutions can bring to the healthcare industry and map back to the need for interoperability. 2010 will be a critical year for healthcare providers and the HIT implemented will directly affect how healthcare reform will ultimately look in the end.

In a video posted on the Healthcare IT News Web site a registered nurse working at the Eastern Maine Medical Center describes her experience working in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and how EMRs have affected the productivity of the Medical Center. In the video she discusses how EMRs have improved the efficiency of providing care, especially in the ICU, serving as a fast way to obtain a patient’s medical history and that they have facilitated speedier data entry. Soon, this will become a reality for hospitals and healthcare providers of all sizes.

The video demonstrates a firsthand, practical account regarding how technology (i.e. EMRs) is empowering healthcare professionals with the support to do their jobs better. She describes how EMRs allow the medical staff to prepare for patients before they arrive via information from other hospitals, allows them to quickly view their medical history and to easily update and share the information. Beyond creating efficiencies, EMRs also help eliminate errors in delivery of medication. The RN specifically addresses the usefulness of having the information about medications right on the EMR so they can easily identify what the medication is, what it is used for and what it looks like.

While EMRs are helping to aim the industry in the right direction, they alone do not create a truly connected healthcare model. The healthcare industry, especially the ICU, is a very fast paced environment with multiple steps/checkpoints that are conductive to human error. When implementing RFID into the model, these processes are dramatically mitigated and many types of errors and risks can be eliminated altogether. The combination of these factors optimizes the health care environment for patient safety and staff efficiency.

RFID, specifically, addresses these factors and has virtually limitless applications once the infrastructure is in place. Automating many of these steps greatly reduces the opportunity for medical error through the correct identification of patients and staff, real-time transparency across the continuum of care, real-time location and maintenance management of assets and inventory. Here are some of the ways implementing RFID can create interoperability and its role in creating a truly connected healthcare model.

·         Improve the accuracy of patient identification: RFID wrist bands, handheld readers accurately identify patients every time (patient & staff tracking).

·         Improve the effectiveness of communication among caregivers: RFID makes real-time changes in EMRs accessible to all caregivers, facilitating the accurate and effective communication of key details (patient & staff tracking, lab & sample tracking, medication tracking).

·         Improve the safety of using medications: RFID ensures the right dosage of the right medication is given to the right person at the right time. It can prevent dangerous interactions and associate the caregiver who prescribes/ administers the drugs with the patient in the EHR (patient & staff tracking, medication tracking, inventory management).

·         Accurately and completely reconcile medications across the continuum of care: EHR via RFID provides real-time, accurate and complete information across the continuum of care (patient & staff tracking, medication tracking, lab & sample tracking).

·         Reduce the risk of patient harm resulting from falls: RFID Patient tracking can notify appropriate personnel when patients who are at high risk for falls get out of their beds/ rooms, allowing them to respond immediately and restore the patient to safe conditions. (patient tracking)

·         Improve recognition and response to changes in a patient’s condition: RFID can enable teams to quickly recognize, locate and reach a patient with the appropriate tools and medications to respond to their condition changes (patient & staff tracking, inventory management, asset tracking & maintenance, medication tracking).

It is when EMRs and other HIT are implemented to work together that the truly connected healthcare model will be achieved. Although the definition of meaningful use is continuing to change, we know that by reducing costs, minimizing risks and improving patient care, meaningful use is being achieved through this model.

Healthcare IT News today reported that a new study says health care costs could be cut by 40 percent using a “connected healthcare” model. The report, by the Massachusetts Medical Device Industry Council (MassMEDIC) and Cambridge Consultants, surveyed leading health care providers, payers, patients and technology leaders.

The survey shows that focusing on patient well-being will improve patient outcomes and that coordinating care “will reduce wasteful spending in defensive medicine, inefficient claims processing, medical errors and emergency room services” (Healthcare IT News, Sept. 18).

The articles describes the integrated connected care model:

“An integrated connected health approach advocates an end-to-end solution, giving patients control as well as responsibility and connecting them with a wide network of healthcare professionals and online applications. This integration can be achieved through a range of technologies, beginning with electronic medical records…”

Many respondents had a limited view of connected health, understanding the concept as electronic medical records or remote monitoring.

A surprising 40 percent of people surveyed said they were unaware of any examples or solutions for the connected health approach. Advocates call for a national educational campaign on the implications for improved patient  care and outcomes.

Those who did believe in the approach’s potential for cost-savings largely anticipated that it would take 4-15 years to achieve widespread adoption in the US (90 percent).

For more information about this report, view the full article on Healthcare IT News.

The article also references the PriceWaterhouseCoopers’ Health Research Institute report released in August that estimated $1.2 trillion dollars in wasteful spending each year in the US health care industry — more than half of the total amount spent annually ($2.3 trillion).

Contact us to learn how an RFID-integrated solution could help your health care facility support a connected health care model by automatically and accurately capturing critical data and integrating the information in real time across virtually any electronic system, including electronic medical records.