Improving Healthcare Efficiency | VA Medical
Improving Healthcare Efficiency
How the Department of Veterans Affairs is Using Real-Time Visibility to Increase Clinical Efficiencies and Reduce Delays in Care for Veterans
Challenge
Providing the highest quality of care for veterans is a top priority for the Department of Veterans Affairs. The organization knew that they needed to rely on new technology to help ensure veterans are receiving the best care at their hospitals while also meeting their operational objectives of decreasing costs, reducing delays in patient care, and improving healthcare efficiency and staff productivity
Solution
In 2013, Intelligent InSites was selected to provide the enterprise-wide software solution for the Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) $543 million Real Time Location System (RTLS) contract as a subcontractor to the prime contractor, HP Enterprise Services. The five-year contract provides 152 medical centers in the 21 Veterans Integrated Service Networks (VISNs) and seven Consolidated Medical Outpatient Pharmacy facilities with a real-time, system-wide solution to help improve operational efficiency, quality, satisfaction, and compliance.
Real-Time Operational Intelligence
By automatically collecting data from millions of RTLS and RFID tags on VA medical equipment, surgical instruments, and supplies, the Intelligent InSites solution provides VA with unprecedented visibility, analytics, and intelligence into its operational processes. Initial use cases include asset management, cath lab supply management, sterile processing workflow, and automated temperature monitoring.
Enterprise-Wide Architecture
The Intelligent InSites software platform is designed to span multiple hospitals across large healthcare systems, aggregating and processing data to provide real-time operational intelligence at the department level, hospital level, and healthcare system level. At the level of a VA Medical Center, the Intelligent InSites solution helps VA employees impact operational processes and patient care in real time. At a regional and national level, the enterprise-wide capabilities of the Intelligent InSites platform will allow VA to monitor, benchmark, and improve system-wide operational performance and process improvement initiatives, resulting in increased healthcare efficiency and improved veteran care.
Open Platform, Open APIs
A fundamental aspect of the Intelligent InSites solution is the ability for third-party developers, IT departments, and healthcare solution providers to build location-enabled solutions on the Intelligent InSites software platform, or to integrate with the Intelligent InSites solution to provide or leverage real-time information from across the enterprise. Everything within the Intelligent InSites platform is accessible through open application programming interfaces (APIs), allowing developers to easily build new solutions and leverage the real-time operational intelligence within the Intelligent InSites solution.
Results
RTLS is helping the VA improve patient safety through process automation, standardization, and real-time information to help ensure:
- Medical equipment and instruments follow proper sterilization workflows
- The right equipment is available for procedures at the right time
- Recalled items can be located and removed immediately
- Equipment nearing expiration can be exchanged at no extra cost and without waste
- Cost savings are achieved that can be reinvested back into additional veteran care
- Real-time data allows for optimal inventory levels and easy ordering
- Medical staff experience better employee engagement, satisfaction, and less turnover
Customer Profile
Deployment:
Prime Contract: HP Enterprise Services
Software Partner: Intelligent InSites
RTLS Hardware Partner: CenTrak
Key Integrations:
Censis Technologies (sterile processing and surgical instrument tracking)
WaveMark (cath lab supply management)
AEMS/MERS (asset management solution)
VistA CPRS (electronic health record)
Real-Time Location System Benefit Realization
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ VISN 11 has led the way in technology and innovation with the VA Real-Time Location System (RTLS) – a solution that provides easy, end-to-end visibility across their medical centers from a single user interface. Learn about the benefits experienced by the VA.
We’ve been able to improve our efficiency, which frees up our nursing staff to have more hands-on time with patients. That’s the goal, that’s why we’re here, to take care of the veteran.”
– OR Charge Nurse, VISN 11
Finding the exact items went from being nearly impossible to locating these items in seconds with RTLS.”
– Network Chief Logistics Officer/Senior RTLS Contracting Officer’s Representative, VISN 11
Resources
Creating an RFP for RTLS
Creating an RFP for a real-time location system requires the consideration of key criteria...
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How Smart Design Enables Smart Healthcare Operations
Sanford Health put patients first by using smart design to enable smart healthcare operations.
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