RTLS Helps Address Staff Duress

Realtime location systems (RTLS) have long been known to help hospitals with medical device management, but there is a new use-case that is growing in popularity and importance: addressing staff safety and duress. Through RLTS platforms, security teams can be alerted to the exact location of staff who need immediate assistance. As violence towards nurses and physicians increases, this will become a more important use-case for this technology. Increasing Violence and Duress A recent survey of healthcare workers (hospitals and long-term care facilities) found: 90% had experienced (or been in close proximity to) violence from a patient or a patient’s caregiver in the past month 75% had encountered both verbal and physical assaults in the past month Almost 50% of workers needed to call for security or another co-worker to assist in the past month The survey did not capture the number of time healthcare workers felt they were under duress, which presumably would be much higher than the actual number of incidents being reported. RTLS + Staff Safety Healthcare IT Today sat down with Kapil Asher, Head of the Healthcare Practice at Kontakt.io, a company that makes an RTLS platform to talk about the use-cases for RTLS in healthcare, including staff safety and duress. “We’ve implemented a Staff Duress solution,” explained Asher. “Using our real time location sensing technology platform and a wearable RTLS badge, we provide them [healthcare workers] with a panic alarm but...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - Category: Information Technology Authors: Tags: Communication and Patient Experience Health IT Company Healthcare IT Security and Privacy Healthcare Scene Featured Kapil Asher Kontakt.io nurse violence patient workflow physician violence Real Time Location Services RLTS staff du Source Type: blogs