At Barcoding, we’ve been able to talk to many professionals on the front lines, including in hospitals and health care facilities. We’ve learned that these organizations are faced with the challenges of ensuring a positive patient experience while improving staff efficiency and reducing out-of-pocket claims for lost patient property.
The rapidly escalating surge in COVID-19 infections across the U.S due to the Delta variant has recently raised even more difficulties for hospitals and health systems.
For example, staffing shortages are seen in many COVID hot spots that can no longer keep up with patient volumes and are losing workers to burnout and lucrative out-of-state temporary employment.
Additionally, pediatric hospitals and public health professionals are raising concerns about the increasing impact of COVID on children at the same time schools around the country are heading back for in-person instruction. Impacts are being seen across the country, for example:
- More than 1900 children in the US were hospitalized with COVID-19 as of August 14.
- Clay Jenkins, Dallas County judge, stated in an August 13 press conference that Dallas and the 19 surrounding counties were out of pediatric ICU beds and that young patients needing care would likely be transferred outside the state.
- Also, while pediatric hospitals do not typically have capacity concerns, Tennessee Health Commissioner Dr. Lisa Piercey stated that the accelerated spread of the Delta variant, along with an unanticipated rise of an unrelated respiratory disease, could completely fill the state’s children's hospitals soon.
To adapt to new situations brought on by COVID-19, focus your efforts on the patient experience.
1. Staffing shortages and capacity issues increase the demand for nurses and front-line workers. Additionally, relatives are not permitted in patient rooms, and therefore cannot take a patient’s valuables and property home.
More property to manage means more administrative work for nurses and other frontline staff. Automation can make the property collection process more efficient and accurate. Users can take advantage of pre-set checklists to quickly document what is being collected. Capturing photos and entering short notes adds more details about the condition, brand, and other property attributes. By scanning a patient ID barcode from a wristband, as well as barcodes on property bags, containers, or large individual items, hospitals, and healthcare facilities can maintain an accurate record of all property a patient turns over.
Property storage locations can also be tracked using barcodes. Locations are scanned when the property is assigned for storage. Property can be stored in multiple locations such as storage bins or safes, and each interaction with the employee (such as storage and retrieval) is tracked so that the location of the property is always known by the system.
When it is time to return belongings, a scan of the patient’s wristband shows where all property is located, ensuring that no belongings are missed during retrieval. All items can then be reviewed with the patient when returned.
All of this ensures that staff can collect, manage, and return patient belongings as efficiently as possible, facilitating data entry, and reduce time spent looking for lost property.
2. To minimize contact with patients’ property, nurses may not be able to properly inventory belongings.
When contact with patient belongings is limited, photographs can assist with documenting exactly what property has been collected. Our IntelliTrack Patient Belongings Tracking allows for multiple photographs to be captured for both an item and a property bag.
3. Some hospitals reportedly are using opaque biohazard bags to store COVID patients’ property. These bags may get misplaced, or may not be transferred along with a patient if they are moved to another facility.
Our IntelliTrack Patient Belongings Tracking tracks every property bag stored for a patient and uses a barcode scan of the bag at retrieval to “check off” that staff has collected all patient property, ensuring no property is missed. Additionally, Barcoding, Inc., can provide property barcode labels that specifically identify the bag as patient belongings without needing to see contents.
4. Patients may not be able to sign for the property
As part of the normal patient property collection workflows, patients review and sign for the property collected and returned. With automation, this signature can be captured on a mobile device. Understanding that patients may not be able to sign, the application allows for the user to record if the patient is unable (or unwilling) to sign.
Our IntelliTrack Patient Belongings Tracking provides a simple, efficient method to track the storage of patient valuables and property while allowing healthcare professionals to focus on patient care.
Contact us to find out how we can work together to make your team more efficient, accurate, and connected with mobile solutions like IntelliTrack Patient Belongings Tracking, and more.
Want more Barcoding?
To stay in the loop about everything new in the supply chain world, check back for more posts on the Barcoding Blog. You can also keep up with us and our fellow #SupplyChainGeeks through our social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram!
