The Health Care RFID Blog

With the H1N1 epidemic last year and flu season returning healthcare organizations will need to be prepared. With several outbreaks happening within hospitals it is important for healthcare workers to abide by the guidelines set by the CDC in regards to proper hand-hygiene practices.

Radio frequency identification (RFID) and Real-Time Location Systems (RTLS) have the ability to not only monitor the compliance of hand-hygiene but also have the ability to aid in reminding the staff to wash their hands in high stress situations. An RFID hand-hygiene solution offers a simple tool that follows the guidelines set forth by the CDC.

With Medicare and Medicaid cutting back reimbursements in regards to patient re-admittance, due to the growing number of Healthcare Acquired Infections (HAIs), healthcare organizations will have to take extra measures to prevent the spread of influenza this fall.

Is your organization ready to combat the flu season?

Meeting the JCAHO National Patient Safety Goals is no small task for any healthcare provider. Knowing JCAHO can call any day to inform you that it will audit your facility seems to be a constant fear in the industry. The JCAHO certification is an absolute MUST to be considered a reputable healthcare provider that provides a safe environment for both patients and staff. The National Patient Safety Goals serve as a scorecard for JCAHO. Healthcare providers must prove they are benchmarking toward these goals and demonstrate the steps they are taking to ensure they meet them in a timely manner.

So where do you start? Looking at a list of eight major initiatives can be intimidating. It is important to take a holistic approach to meeting these goals, not just simply checking them off a list as individual tasks.  At the end of the day, it is essentially one goal: creating an environment that is safe.

Here are a few steps you can take when tackling the 2010 NPSG:

1.       Get in front of it.

•  Don’t wait to receive the call from JCAHO that they may be there any day. Start taking the steps now to achieve these goals.

2.       Identify a strategic third-party partner to help you evaluate the situation.

• Technology is playing a bigger and bigger role in meeting the requirements. Working with a systems integrator like Dynamic can help you identify solutions that meet your needs, within your budget, and can work together to achieve interoperability.

3.       Identify where your strengths and weaknesses are.

• Do a complete site survey. Not everything can be fixed at once and this will help identify what areas need to have the most focus and what areas are working well already.

4.       Evaluate what changes will work for your hospital’s culture.

•  No matter what solutions you implement, if it does not align with your organization’s culture, it will not be adopted. For example, as part of Dynamic’s site survey process, we observe how the staff interacts, where they go to do certain tasks, among other indicators, to help us identify what RFID and RTLS solutions would be appropriate.

5.       Implement changes in phases.

• Dynamic never recommends rolling out a technology solution enterprise-wide. Integrate the solution in the area that needs it most and evaluate the pros and cons so that the solution can be perfected before it is deployed throughout the organization.