ASSET TRACKING/SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT
Better bed and mattress management achieved
With growing demand for healthcare services, and acutely limited resources, tracking the location of hospital beds and mattresses with RFID can see significant efficiency gains and improvements in patient safety. So says Simon Dawkins, RFID product manager for Healthcare at RFiD Discovery, who here provides an overview of available technologies, and, via case study examples, illustrates ‘the multiple benefits’ of RFID tracking – including reducing the need to rent beds, supporting strategic decision making, and improving infection control.
According to the BBC, in 2015/16 more than one in 10 seriously ill patients in England faced long delays waiting for a hospital bed after an emergency admission.1
In Quarter 3 of 2017/18 the
average occupancy rate for general and acute beds open overnight was 90.7%,1 well above what is considered the safe limit of 85%, which would give staff sufficient time to clean beds, keep infections low, and ensure that patients who need beds can be provided with them quickly.
With the situation set to get worse due to increasing patient numbers and further budget cuts, NHS Trusts are having to look at ways to maximise the use of existing beds and mattresses. Due to the physical size of most acute hospitals, it is often difficult to establish exactly where beds, cots, trolleys, and mattresses, are; long remote corridors, bed repair stores, and lift bay areas can provide perfect ‘hiding places’. The use of an increasing variety of specialist beds – such as bariatric, ultra-low, or spinal beds – makes it even more difficult to identify and locate the correct type of bed when required. While traditional systems to record bed movements offer some visibility of bed locations, they often involve time-consuming manual processes, and can be prone to error.
A better way to track beds and mattresses
RFID technology offers a variety of ways to track beds and mattresses, and determining the best solution for a particular hospital or Trust depends on various factors, not least budget, available
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The front entrance at Cambridge’s famous Addenbrooke’s Hospital. Harland Simon dubs the Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (CUH) ‘the pioneer of active and passive RFID for asset tracking’ in healthcare.
resources, existing infrastructure, and other tracking requirements. Currently, most Trusts who track their beds have active RFID solutions in place, which often also track other medical devices. Recent advances in reader technology, however, mean that passive RFID can offer a feasible alternative, and already there is growing interest in the healthcare sector in using this technology. With a typical cost of around 50p for a passive label (compared with around £50 for active tags), the advantages are obvious, as it offers the possibility to track a much wider range of assets at a lower cost. This option is particularly attractive for those NHS Trusts in England who are implementing GS1-compliant asset labels with embedded RFID. The wide variety of
RFID technology offers a variety of ways to track beds and mattresses, and determining the best solution for a particular hospital or Trust depends on various factors, not least budget
54 Health Estate Journal August 2018
available passive RFID tags, such as washable silicon tags, flexible fabric tags for use inside mattress covers, and even those which can survive sterilisation processes, adds to the appeal.
Real-time versus ‘last-seen’ Regardless of whether active or passive RFID is used, budget constraints largely determine if beds and mattresses are to be tracked in real-time or on a ‘last-seen’ basis. While the ‘gold standard’ clearly would be a real-time tracking solution incorporating a complete network of fixed readers throughout the hospital, in reality a starting point for many Trusts is often a combination – fixed readers are used in areas with a high frequency of equipment movement, while other areas are covered by manual scanning. Over time justifying the investment of a fixed reader network often becomes easier, in particular where not only beds and mattresses are tracked, but also other assets, such as those managed by ‘IT’ or ‘Estates’.
Using active Wi-Fi-based RFID offers another real-time tracking alternative,
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