Northwest Michigan Surgery Center Selects RTLS from Versus

 

(Traverse City, Michigan, November 10, 2011) – Michigan’s largest surgery center, Northwest Michigan Surgery Center recently selected the Versus Advantages™ Real-time Locating System (RTLS) to help improve the patient care experience. Key focus areas include relaying patient status information to families in the waiting room and automated process flow management for clinical staff.

 

Northwest Michigan Surgery Center is one of the largest surgery centers in Michigan and ranked among the top in the nation. Averaging around 80 patients per day within their six operating rooms and four procedure rooms, the center maintains an incredibly high patient volume, which it seeks to continually improve and manage.

 

Currently, Northwest Michigan Surgery Center staff manually record and calculate patient wait times. When using the Versus Advantages Clinic solution, patients will receive a small Clearview Badge which emits a safe Infrared signal. This locating badge, coupled with the Versus Advantages software, will allow Northwest Michigan Surgery Center to capture, display and report on several patient care elements.

 

1.    They will know instantly and at a glance, how many patients are waiting in the waiting room and other areas of the clinic.

2.    On the exam and surgery sides, they’ll know exactly where each patient is, when and where they interacted with staff and where the patient is in terms of the visit progression.

3.    They’ll know how long each patient has been waiting, how long since the patient was last seen and how much time the patient spends with the Medical Assistant, Nurse, Physician or lab technician.

4.    They’ll be able to share this information with patients’ family members in the waiting areas via electronic Glance-and-Go™ boards—cutting down on interruptions to staff.

5.    The RTLS will be integrated to the clinic’s SourceMedical Vision EHR™ and to the clinic’s scheduling system to automate patient badge assignments.

 

For the first time, the clinic will be automatically capturing real-time-based patient care metrics and interaction data. “Through the immediate feedback we’ll be providing patients and their families, we expect the solution to have a positive impact on patient satisfaction,” says Jim Stilley, CEO, Northwest Michigan Surgery Center. “Behind the scenes, we’ll be improving our patient flow processes through automation and continuously collecting data that will allow us to evaluate and report on our procedures. This is important to our ongoing patient satisfaction and process improvement goals.”

 

While more and more clinics have begun to realize the benefits of automated patient workflows to facilitate operations and safety, the concept is still relatively new among clinics. Northwest Michigan Surgery Center is one of many on the growing list of Versus outpatient clinic customers. “Versus was an easy choice to make,” Stilley says. “They’re the only ones in the industry providing the location accuracy necessary to automate clinical workflows, they work with the top healthcare organizations in the nation, and they’re located just miles from our facility. We can’t imagine a better arrangement to bring this technology to our patients.”