Real-time tracking of patients and providers to improve hospital care

On any day at three of Massachusetts General Hospital’s outpatient clinics, up to 100 patients may be seen for routine, sick or urgent care. When they register, patients 18 and older are asked to wear a wrist coil with an active-RFID tag. Compliance is virtually 100 percent once patients understand the purpose: to help care providers find ways to spend more time providing better care.

Clinicians and staff—motivated to participate because they want to minimize wait times and increase direct care time—also faithfully clip on tags daily. The patient and staff tracking tags are part of a real-time location system (RTLS) from Radianse, Inc.

“Our challenge is to optimize how we use our limited medical resources to provide the best possible care without compromising the needs of waiting patients,” said James Stahl, MD, CM, MPH. A senior scientist with the MGH Institute for Technology Assessment, Dr. Stahl practices in one of the clinics and is the lead on the research. He is firm in his assessment that unbiased, accurate data is essential for success.

Automatic capture of how and when patients, providers and staff move and interact removes the barriers to success inherent in manual time-stamps or an observer with a clipboard. Real-time tracking is not resource-intensive, error-prone, obtrusive or subjective, and it reduces the chance of participants consciously adapting behavior to impact results.

Dr. Stahl presented the findings to date at the 2009 Society of General Internal Medicine and the results were published online in the Journal of Medical Systems in September.

Looking ahead, the MGH clinics may deploy Radianse patient and staff tracking applications to let clinicians find each other quickly and to always know patient location, such as when patients go for procedures or testing.

“Mass General has long been a great innovator in applying location technology,” said Steve Schiefen, Radianse president and CEO. “Physicians and researchers there have used real-time tracking applications over the past six years to find new ways to improve day to day operations. We value our collaboration for the insight we gain and the proven impact it has on the frontline of care.”

http://www.radianse.com