RFID benefits in hospital Management
RFID is considered as key technology in eliminating some of the major bottle necks in hospital management and improving process efficiencies. In one of the major surveys in the U.S on benefits of the RFID technology in Healthcare, 70% cited the patient safety as the major factor to implement RFID. Improved patient information flow and general productivity came in second, with about half of respondents deeming such benefits as "very important". There was a strong consensus among upper management that RFID is the future.
The processes where RFID technology can bring a dramatic improvement in hospitals are:
Patient tracking
Many health professionals are concerned about the growing number of patients who are misidentified before, during or after medical treatment. Aligning a proper data with the proper patient is paramount in healthcare, whether or not technology is applied. Some of the most commonly reported surgical errors involved surgery on the wrong body part or site, or on the wrong patient. As per a latest reports, mistakes such as misidentification of patients are responsible for 98,000 deaths per year in the U.S. hospitals. RFID is being considered as a prospective tool in ensuring that there are no medical errors during treatment. RFID based wristbands could be issued to patients which would carry information about his name, age, gender, drugs and the dosage to be administered. It will ensure easier and faster identification of patients so as to strengthen the level of care and to administer drugs safely and maintain timing.
Assets tracking and management
Equipment Management is considered to be a universal problem in hospitals. At present these systems are based on manual data feed and rely on operators who are in charge of taking care of these equipment and updating data on the network. This process of collecting data is error-prone. Besides, it is not possible to track the location of a hospital equipments in real-time. Large medical facilities report that hardware such as wheelchairs and IV pumps go missing at an alarming and expensive rate.
RFID can eliminate the need of having separate staff to maintain the equipment record as it moves from one floor/department to others, show whether each item is in use, available or in need of servicing and real-time location information about the equipment, personnel and other key resources. It is also used to monitor and track unauthorized persons who are present around high-threat areas.
Blood Management
The technology can be applied to keep record of the blood packets and ensure the right transfusion of blood by matching the patient data with the blood data. It can also be applied to maintain data of the time and date of blood obtained by the hospital or blood bank and group blood packets to use them accordingly.
Real time benefits of RFID
Virginia Hospitals in U.S have deployed a RFID network to track mobile medical equipment at three Virginia hospitals operated by Bon Secours Richmond Health System. The three facilities are St. Mary's Hospital, Richmond Community Hospital and the Memorial Regional Medical Center
Birmingham hospital NHS trust in U.K has tagged patients with RFID chips to improve safety and ensure that correct operations are carried out on the right patients.
Blood bank supplies at Saarbruecken Clinic are equipped with RFID chips so to prevent any confusion or mix ups in regard to blood transfusion and blood treatments. In the first phase, almost thousand bags of bloods are being labeled. The solution makes it sure that correct blood is given to each patient.
How hospitals rate RFID's business benefits?
Monday, June 12, 2006
The top four business benefits expected by using RFID were improved: patient safety, patient flow management, productivity and business processes. The majority rated achieving compliance with policy as only "somewhat important" as opposed to "very important."
| Very Important | Somewhat Important | Important | Not Important | N/A | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Achieve compliance with policy | 26% | 30% | 27% | 7% | 10% |
| Antitheft/anticounterfeit/antitampering | 42% | 22% | 25% | 4% | 7% |
| Improve asset visibility | 37% | 28% | 22% | 5% | 7% |
| Improve business processes | 45% | 30% | 16% | 2% | 7% |
| Improve patient flow management | 48% | 25% | 15% | 1% | 11% |
| Improve patient safety | 67% | 14% | 11% | 1% | 7% |
| Improve productivity | 48% | 31% | 15% | 1% | 6% |
| Improve security | 44% | 28% | 19% | 2% | 7% |
| Precision location | 36% | 30% | 24% | 3% | 7% |
| Reduce inventory | 34% | 26% | 26% | 6% | 8% |
| Reduce labor costs | 42% | 22% | 23% | 6% | 7% |
Most facilities are in the discovery and information gathering stage in evaluating RFID. In 12 months, most expect them to be in the experimentation test phase, and in 24 months the majorities are expected to have projects deployed.
Source: : RFID in Healthcare: Poised for Growth, a survey of health care executives by Bearing Point and the National Alliance for Health Information Technology, November 2005