Small-scale testing of RFID in a hospital setting: RFID as bed trigger.
RFID technology shows significant potential for transforming healthcare, yet few studies assess this potential. Our study measured the effectiveness of using RFID as a bed trigger: a tool to accelerate identification of empty beds. We made a small alteration in the discharge process to associate RFID tags with patients and created an RFID-based system that automatically determined discharge time. For each patient, we evaluated the difference in the discharge times recorded manually by the current process and the RFID-based system. The study was conducted on 86 patients over 2 months in 2 physically separate multi-specialty units. Compared to the preexisting process, the RFID-based system identified empty beds >20 minutes earlier 67% of the time with an average of 25 minutes and median of 9 minutes earlier. Hospital leadership defined an improvement of approximately 10 minutes as significant. With minimal investment, our small-scale study lead hospital leadership to begin planning RFID deployment.
Kannry
Joseph
J
Division of Clinical Informatics, Mount Sinai Medical Center, NY, NY, USA.
Emro
Susan
S
Blount
Marion
M
Ebling
Maria
M
D000046:Academic Medical Centers / Q000458:organization & administration; D001509:Bed Occupancy; D003195:Computer Communication Networks; D003219:Confidentiality; D006739:Hospital Administration; D006751:Hospital Information Systems; D006801:Humans; D050316:Medical Order Entry Systems; D009518:New York; D019982:Organizational Case Studies; D010351:Patient Discharge; D010355:Patient Identification Systems; D011846:Radio Waves; D013685:Telecommunications / Q000295:instrumentation*