4 Ways RTLS Technology Improves Patient Experience & Safety in Hospitals

As a healthcare provider, an important pillar of your business strategy should be delivering the highest level of patient experience possible. No patient visiting your hospital wants to be there. While worrying about the various reasons they need to see a doctor, the last thing on a patient’s mind should be that they’re feeling unheard or that the staff is disorganized. In moments of strife, the smallest moments of care can make the biggest impact on a patient’s experience — and sometimes, comfort is just as important as the healthcare itself. 

In order to provide your patients with the highest quality of care possible, you need to ensure that your hospital operations are streamlined and modernized. Technology is advancing throughout every industry faster than ever, including healthcare. One of those advancements is real time location solutions, or RTLS. RTLS is an effective tool in keeping your hospital running at its highest level, and is an efficient way to avoid any sort of mishaps that could negatively impact a patient’s experience. This technology helps automate the documentation of data, enrich staff communications, and heighten safety — all in the name of enhancing the overall patient care experience. 

With Prosight, we offer some of the leading RTLS technology solutions in the healthcare industry. Our RTLS technology is designed to increase efficiency of operations across all parts of the hospital. By helping streamline multiple variables — from medical asset tracking to automating manual tasks  — healthcare workers are able to focus on their number one goal: caring for  patients.

Here are four ways that RTLS technology in healthcare helps improve patient experience and safety in hospitals:

1. Medical Asset Tracking

A major benefit RTLS offers is medical asset tracking. This allows your staff to focus on doing their jobs and not waste their time or resources tracking down medical equipment that is not located in the correct place. Through this efficiency, your hospital is able to save time and reduce waste and therefore improve workflows, allowing staff to dedicate their valuable time to ensuring patients receive the best healthcare imaginable.  

Not only does RTLS technology help support streamlined asset tracking, which allows for better time management for your staff, it also leads to more readily available equipment and supplies for patients. Less manual counting. No more spreadsheets that are subject to human error. No more running out of vaccines or medications because someone forgot to mark that inventory was low. No more situations where medical equipment misses its proper cleaning schedule, causing a healthcare worker to not have the tools they need in an emergency.

Instead, RTLS technology allows those challenges to be automated. Through innovative software, RTLS technology in healthcare provides valuable automation that takes care of the details, allowing your staff to focus on supporting patients through their healthcare journeys.

2. Hospital Wayfinding

Hospitals are big places that have a lot of different zones, each of which serve various purposes. 

RTLS technology rises to the occasion by providing real-time GPS functionality, offering patients and visitors seamless, interactive navigation of hospital facilities. There’s no reason that someone should be lost or confused while they’re trying to see their loved one in a hospital, especially in a moment of crisis. With the assistance of RTLS, these situations are avoided. The map of the hospital is easily digestible, providing patients and their guests the information they need in order to handle challenging situations.

3. Patient Safety from Infection

If we’ve learned anything from the last few years, it’s that infection can easily spread, so due diligence in regards to hospital staff hygiene is one easy way to help contain sickness. Almost every hospital in the world has some sort of guidance to basic hygiene like hand-washing, but the systems have traditionally been manual and relied on self-reporting and self-governing. As much as there’s general trust for caregivers to do the right thing, there’s no room or excuse for error in this space — specifically from the medical world. Close monitoring of staff hand sanitization is essential to ensure compliance with various mandated regulations.

4. Staff Safety From Duress

In addition to hospital wayfinding and medical asset tracking, RTLS healthcare technology enables staff safety solutions that offer real-time visibility of staff for emergent and non-emergent situations, which can increase response time in case of emergency. 

Staff members, like nurses, are empowered to discreetly push a duress button on their badge should they find themselves in an unsafe situation, alerting security or other appropriate personnel to their exact location. This allows for a quick and accurate response to escalating situations.

Using RTLS Technology to Improve Patient Experience & Safety in Hospitals

The future is now, and the question of whether or not RTLS technology in healthcare is worth the investment is no longer a question. It’s the modern standard. Prosight’s RTLS technology can solidify your hospital as an industry leader, and will help you to provide the best healthcare possible. Discover how Cox Prosight can transform your hospital’s operation today.