RTLS Improves Hospital's Operations

This case study highlights how Baltimore's Mercy Medical Center leveraged Skytron's RTLS (real-time location system) technology to monitor refrigerator temperatures and track IV pumps.

In a fast-paced hospital such as Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore, the ability to track assets and maintain proper temperatures in refrigeration units is paramount to providing quality care. So when the 136-year-old hospital needed a supplier of temperature-monitoring and asset-tracking technology, the project team had to satisfy a list of requirements – reliability, affordability, and ease of installation, use and management. The hospital found what it needed in medical equipment supplier Skytron.

Skytron's technology required minimal infrastructure upgrades at Mercy and delivered affordable, accurate monitoring devices that ensure refrigerators keep humming at proper temperatures and inform staff in real time of the exact locations of more than 2,000 assets, such as patient beds, IV pumps, SCD (Sequential Compression Device) machines, and wheelchairs. Skytron's first task was to install temperature monitors in refrigerators that store everything from patient meals to medications to blood for transfusions. Refrigerators must maintain temperatures within required ranges to comply with standards set by the Joint Commission, a non-profit accreditation body that certifies more than 19,000 health care organizations across the United States.

Some of Mercy's 225 refrigeration units had inconsistent temperatures and required attention from the nursing staff. "The problem was that nurses had to keep tabs on refrigerator temperatures, and of course we wanted their focus to be on patient care to improve the patient experience," says Grady Chavis, Mercy Senior Director of Facilities Operations.

Skytron delivered a proposal to install affordable monitoring devices that emit alerts when temperatures slip out of range. The devices communicate through RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification) sensors plugged into the electrical current throughout the hospital that transmit status updates to a software dashboard. The color-coded dashboard indicates when remedial or preventive action is required. Green means everything is fine, while yellow indicates trouble and red calls for an immediate response. Access This Content To Read This Case Study in Its Entirety.