Patient Care at HealthEast Bethesda Hospital Required Accurate Clocks Synced Up Across Systems
Overview
The parapet at the HealthEast Bethesda Hospital is the highest point in all of the seven-county metro areas of Minneapolis and St. Paul.
“You can look out the window and see straight into downtown Minneapolis. The view is incredible” said Kevin Johnson in Facility Maintenance. Built in 1931, the hospital sits on 8.5 acres overlooking the banks of the Mississippi River.
Challenge
Bethesda Hospital had an ongoing problem with their clocks for a number of years. And with close to 350 clocks, this was no small problem. “To be honest, it was a real pain in the butt”, according to Larry Johanson, Senior Lead Engineer. “Who has time to fool around with maintaining or repairing hundreds of clocks? We have so many things to work on related to patient care. Our mishmash of wired clocks and radio-control clocks no longer worked for us.”
Solution
Johnson and Johanson used experience from their internal Value Analysis Group to find a new wireless clock system.
“You have to look at both the long-term value and the lowest first cost. You’re going to pay for it later if you don’t look at both”, explained Johnson. “With a little bit of research, we found the SiteSync IQ wireless clock system in the American Time catalog. We did a site survey by walking the hospital with a signal indicator to make sure we had signal coverage. Once we located the system controller above the North Wing elevator, it was easy to install the clocks ourselves. The benefit to our department is that our work orders for clocks have been next to nothing for the past 4 years.”
Results
The benefits of synchronized time affect staff, patients and visitors alike. There are fewer complaints from administration about staff showing up early or late to meetings. Shift changes and the nurses’ time of report for each patient are well-orchestrated. The wireless clocks are synchronized to the computer clocks and the patient electronic record down to the exact second.
According to Johnson, “Patient care demands accurate time and we needed to fix this thing once and for all. We did just that with wireless clocks.”