With the growing gap in physicians and nurses needed to properly care for current patient levels, a new report from Long Beach, Calif.-based First Consulting Group entitled, “Next Generation Technologies to Improved Efficiency are Ready Today,” outlines three areas where hospitals can use existing technology to improve care.
Those areas are:
* Eliminate Work Tasks: Most hospitals currently have nurses manually collect data from medical displays, and then enter it into the system at the nurses’ station. The spread of RFID tags on both medical display equipment and patient ID tags allows for the linking of both to the clinical information system.
* Improve Operational Efficiency: RFID tags can streamline patient and asset tracking in hospitals. According to an internal study, one hospital estimated that its nurses spent 60 percent of their time searching for equipment, supplies and lines.
* Transforming Existing Tasks: Kiosks can be used to determine whether or not returning patients might need to fill out registration forms. By scanning a driver’s license or bank card at these kiosks, a patient that has been at the hospital before can be checked in within seconds.
