Patient flow

Patient tracking system installed in Vancouver

VANCOUVER – Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) has implemented TeleTracking Technologies’ patient flow solutions as part of its campaign to improve patient flow and reduce bottlenecks.

As the Vancouver region continues to experience rapid growth, including a large cohort of elderly persons, matching demand for hospital services with available bed capacity has been a challenge.

As such, VCH’s Vancouver General Hospital, UBC Hospital, GF Strong Rehabilitation Centre and Richmond Hospital have embarked on a comprehensive regional patient flow initiative to improve their ability deliver high quality care now, and in the future.

“The ability to monitor and measure patient flow metrics is critical to understanding how, and where, to make process improvements”, said Ida Goodreau, President and CEO, Vancouver Coastal Health (pictured above). “For example, ‘bed turnover time’ is a key indicator. It lets us know if we are utilizing our bed capacity in an efficient manner.”

“It’s tricky however, as there are many steps and multiple people throughout the hospital involved,” she added. “This presents a tremendous communication challenge to quickly alert someone to clean a bed or communicate that a bed is now available. By automating the steps along the patient flow continuum with TeleTracking’s solutions, we can measure baseline quality indicators, and then begin to improve on those metrics.”

Pittsburgh-based TeleTracking Technologies is a world leader in patient flow automation and has been helping hospitals in the US, Canada and the UK since 1991. “You can’t improve what you can’t measure”, asserts Anthony Sanzo, President and CEO of TeleTracking Technologies. “We are proud to play a role in VCHA’s efforts of improving patient care through better patient flow. The executive leadership and the entire VCHA project team have made a solid commitment to this endeavor, and the region’s patients will benefit tremendously.”

Leo Da Silva, Project Consultant for the VCH project team, also points out that it is the first Health Authority in Canada to implement these solutions as part of a regional bed management initiative. This means that they will have the ability to see real-time census, expected discharges and pending admissions, through the entire Health Authority, at any time.

“This is mission critical information necessary to help us accommodate surge capacity and plan for disaster management,” said Goodreau. “And with the 2010 Winter Olympics on the horizon, we need to be prepared for everything.”

About VCHA
VCHA is responsible for the delivery of $2.8 billion in community, hospital and residential care services to over one million people in communities from Richmond through Vancouver, the North Shore, Sunshine Coast, Sea to Sky corridor, Powell River, Bella Bella and Bella Coola.

About TeleTracking
Since 1991, TeleTracking has been the leading provider of the patient flow automation industry with the first automated bed turnover solution, the first digitized electronic bedboard and patient placement solution, and the industry’s first dispatcher-less patient transport solution. The privately-held, Pittsburgh-based company has implemented over 1,500 solutions at more than 700 acute care hospitals in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. For more information, see: www.teletracking.com.