A hospital purchased and finished installing their brand new passive RFID system. With the installation complete and printers ready for tags, the assigned innovation team went to work. After a month of using the system, valuable data had been passively recorded and the team can begin to analyze data. The hospital seems to be operating well except for the Radiation Oncology clinic, which was performing outside of established benchmarks.

RFID data analyzed by the innovation team showed long patient wait times and several other inefficiencies. Due to the data provided by RFID, the hospital was able to identify the underperforming clinic and take active steps to improve performance. The team broke the data down and worked with clinical staff on developing a plan to improve their operational efficiency. In this specific case the clinic’s patient discharge process and equipment management was poor. The innovation team configured automated alerts to be sent to clinical staff, to sterile processing and to environmental services in the event of patient discharge. These alerts enabled staff to be proactive and improve their efficiency in the discharge process.

A month after meeting with the innovation team, Radiation Oncology is ready for reevaluation. With the heightened awareness of their inefficiencies, and with the automated alerts, they feel confident about their progress. The team filtered through the RFID data and noted a major improvement in the clinic’s patient room preparation time following discharge, and a resulting reduction in lobby wait time. While the management of medical equipment in the discharge process had improved, the clinic was still performing below established benchmarks. The innovation team took a deeper look at the RFID data and noticed signs of equipment hoarding. The hospital had established PAR levels for medical assets in the Radiation Oncology clinic, but it appeared the practice of hoarding had caused a lack of sterile equipment. The sterile processing staff, armed with live and accurate RFID data showing details around the PAR level deficiencies, worked with the clinical staff to all but eliminate hoarding.

We travel one month into the future and the clinic has addressed its key operational inefficiencies and, leveraging the stream of relevant and timely RFID data, continues to improve their daily operations. While the clinic has a ways to go before they are the most efficient in the hospital, they have taken great steps forward. Without data provided by the hospital’s RFID system, how would this clinic be performing today? It was the hospital’s interest to improve and RFID data that triggered the under performing clinic to make changes. Within two months the clinic was able to solve equipment management issues and other inefficiencies which greatly improved their daily operations. What would happen if your hospital gained access to RFID data? Become a more efficient and well optimized hospital; Get in touch with Quake Global or learn more here.

Tanner Immonen 

Marketing Coordinator 

Quake Global, Inc. 

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