As COVID-19 has shown us, having a disaster preparedness plan is absolutely critical to healthcare facilities nationwide. Communication systems will be important, and so will the assessment and knowledge of all biomed equipment that is on-hand.

Symtech Solutions offers comprehensive communication and life-saving devices for healthcare facilities, including regional medical centers, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and local hospitals. Our mission is to use cutting-edge technology to bring you the best telecommunications and life safety communication systems. We install and maintain our systems from nurse call and digital whiteboards to wander and infant protection. Since 1982, we’ve been leading the industry not only with our life-saving products, but also with our outstanding customer service. Below, we’ll examine how IT can help locate biomed equipment in the midst of a disaster. Contact us today to learn more!

HOW TRACKING ASSETS IN YOUR HEALTHCARE FACILITY IS KEY

If you imagine a huge hospital facility and then think about the machines that are involved in helping people in their health concerns, such as imaging machines, crash carts, dialysis machines, defibrillators and so many more, it’s a monumental task. Before technology, these machines were kept track of by manual means, which resulted in many errors and a lot of manpower.

Throw in the fact that medical equipment is owned and maintained by different departments within a healthcare facility, but this equipment is all shared, and tracking becomes not only critical to patient care, but also imperative to keeping the losses to a minimum. When equipment goes missing, is misplaced for a long period of time, or is neglected, the result is a replacement cost that can add up quickly when you’re talking hundreds of machines. When a disaster strikes, such as COVID-19, asset management becomes even more paramount.

RTLS Systems & Healthcare Equipment

Enter RTLS. Real Time Location Systems are becoming increasingly important in the medical community as the preferred way to track medical equipment quickly, locate it, and then rush it to use when a crisis hits. Most RTLS systems are wireless. They work quite simply. RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) anchors or RFID readers are placed at key points within the healthcare facility. These anchors then send out radio signals, and they receive radio signals. They can find RFID tags on equipment and then calculate its location using triangulation, signal strength, and time difference of arrival in real time. Not only can RTLS software locate your equipment, it will show you the movement of the asset, the history of its movement, and more. Other data that RTLS can generate include maintenance history, its use, and its service. When an operator interacts with the machine, barcodes can then capture and record that action. These historical reports help in optimizing the use of the equipment, decreases the chances of equipment failure, and assists in compliance regulations.

Symtech Solutions wants to emphasize the importance that accounting plays into all this. By tracking your equipment’s use with RTLS technology, you’ll take the guesswork out of the frequency and the maintenance. This is crucial when it comes to budget planning and recommendations. Administration can more accurately plan for equipment replacement costs and not order new equipment when it is not needed. This also helps with the costs of maintaining a machine that truly just needs to be replaced instead and vice versa, and it can impact the bottomline immensely.

LOCATING EQUIPMENT IN A CRISIS

Time is of the essence in crisis situations, and being able to find biomed machinery that is constantly being moved quickly will save countless hours of manpower and can save lives. Sadly, it’s at these times that people take advantage of the chaos and that equipment is stolen. With RTLS, you’ll know where your equipment is to cut down on theft, especially in a time when that equipment is needed the most.

Symtech Solutions offers The Patient VISion™, which uses software with RTLS platforms to track people, staff, and equipment. You’ll be able to find the specialists quickly, ensure the safety of your patients, and rush the biomed equipment to the location it is needed most. The power of this technology has saved untold numbers of lives. It can tell you when an employee hasn’t moved, indicating that they may have fallen. It can assist with emergency evacuation, fire training, and collision avoidance. What used to take days for equipment management audits now takes hours.

Symtech Solutions has been helping healthcare facilities streamline their operations since 1982. We stay on the cutting-edge of technology to bring you time-saving and life-saving management tools that can track your equipment and patients, help patients receive timely care with nurse call systems, exchange information easily via electronic whiteboards, and help with wander management and infant security.

When you partner with us, you’ll get experience and know-how. From wireless emergency call systems to RTLS tracking and locating, infant security, digital whiteboards, and our Touch-free Temperature Screening Kiosks, our systems solve your facility’s problems and improve customer care considerably. When a crisis comes, it’s important to be prepared, and our technology can be adapted to any environment, and can be the calm behind the storm. Locating equipment, patients, and staff easily lowers stress, helps to prevent burnout, and thus impacts patients on a daily basis.

We offer 24/7 service so when you need us to fix one of our products or you just have a question, we can answer it at any time. We have experienced, system-certified technicians who can respond to your facility, troubleshoot, and repair or replace a part. We understand the importance our systems provide, so we make ourselves available at any time. Our systems are custom to your facility, and we offer training on them as well. Our mission is to make our rapid response monitoring systems as easy as possible to operate, use, and gather data from. We offer the most advanced and cost-effective systems on the market today.

If you are interested in learning more, we offer free webinars where you can see our systems in action. Visit our website, or sign up for a webinar today!