News
McKesson launches visual control system for patient management
7 May 2008
McKesson has launched Horizon Enterprise Visibility, a
‘whiteboard-style’ visual control system for patient management, showing
room availability, patient location and the current status of a
patient’s treatment.
The system has been shown to save up to one hour per nurse per shift
per day, by saving up to 7-10 phone calls and 3-4 wasted logins to
various information systems per day. There was also a reduction in
capacity problems by speeding up the bed turnaround process.
Charmaine McDonald, McKesson UK Managing Director said, “Hospital
staff currently rely on an array of devices such as pagers, texts, radio
communications and the telephone to keep abreast of the current hospital
environment and ward status. Horizon Enterprise Visibility uses visual
controls to drive and sustain process improvements, which will
ultimately increase patient status visibility for all staff and allow
increased focus on the core issue of patient care.”
The system intuitively displays real-time information at a glance via
plasma or LCD screens. Existing departmental systems and location
technologies, such as radio frequency identification (RFID) systems,
populate the visual displays in real-time through colour-coded,
time-stamped icons and signal lights mapped against the floor plan of a
hospital. This enables hospital staff to quickly identify isolation
patients, fall risks or any other patient-safety concerns, and flashing
timers can be used to indicate key actions required.
Currently deployed in hospitals across the US and Germany, Horizon
Enterprise Visibility features more than 75 configurable indicators
allowing individual trusts to set the measures to manage their wards’
activities and quickly identify the status of critical test results,
patient locations, discharge times and bed or room availability.
In addition, Horizon Enterprise Visibility intuitively broadcasts the
status of a bed or room — whether it is occupied, empty or being cleaned
— which negates the need to make multiple calls requesting housekeeping
services.
Charmaine continued, “This room status indicator has proven to be a
massive time-saver: managers can quickly determine where the staff are
most needed, employees can better manage their own time, and all staff
have visibility of when resources — both people and beds — are available
and the specific location of essential equipment.”
Charmaine concludes, “At McKesson we are committed to understanding
the needs of the healthcare sector and we believe that there is huge
potential for visual controls technology in the UK. We are confident
that visual controls will be recognised as the gold standard for driving
and sustaining process improvement in the acute care setting.”
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