Colorado hospital achieves the quadruple aim with RTLS, part 2

Mountain Region CommonSpirit Health's CMIO outlines novel ways RTLS is being used in finding everything from staff and patients to equipment and patients' personal items – and how it all adds up to the quadruple aim.

Editor's Note: This is the second part of this feature story on RTLS achieving the quadruple aim at "hospital of the future" St. Francis Interquest, in Colorado Springs, Colorado, part of 160-hospital health system CommonSpirit Health. Healthcare IT News interviewed Dr. Valerie McKinnis, chief medical informatics officer at Mountain Region CommonSpirit Health, a 20-hospital health system. To read part one of this feature story, click here.

Q. The second of your major RTLS deployments is RTLS-enabled staff announcements. What are these about, what role does RTLS play, and what are the outcomes?

A. The COVID-19 pandemic really highlighted how powerless our patients often feel in our hospitals. We learned during the pandemic, even more than before, that patients often don't know who's coming in and out of their room. They don't know why you're there. They don't know your name or even your role.

And when I was masked and gowned as a hospitalist during the pandemic, I once rounded on a patient twice a day for a week before the patient told me she'd never even seen the doctor. And I explained, well, I've been in here every day. And it became quite clear in talking to her that she had no idea if I was from environmental services, if I was nursing staff, or really what my role was.

CLICK HERE TO READ PART 2 OF THE FEATURE STORY