OPTIMIZING WORKFLOW TO INCREASE
RESIDENT SAFETY
ABOUT PROVIDENCE
Providence Healthcare is a leading Toronto
health care facility, specializing in rehabilitation
for patients who have experienced
strokes, orthopaedic surgery, lower
limb amputation, or who require specialized
geriatric rehabilitation, assessment
and treatment. Providence also provides
complex continuing care, community outreach
and long-term care through their
highly respected
long-term care
home, the Cardinal
Ambrozic Houses
of Providence.
BEFORE CONNEXALL
When staff members raised concerns about
the reliability of the nurse call and resident
wandering safety systems at the Houses of
Providence, the management team saw an
opportunity to improve the facility’s efficiency, staff job satisfaction, and residents’
comfort. It was also the perfect opportunity to replace an aging phone system that was
the primary means of communication between
staff in the sprawling 288-bed home.
A comprehensive assessment revealed that
staff wanted a reliable system that could
handle any type of notifi cation by sending
it to their wireless devices. This would improve
staff efficiency and response times to
residents’ requests.
Staff requested a system that ensured every
call bell request had a guaranteed delivery
to the resident’s own clinical care team, irrespective
of shift and staffing changes or
temporary off-line phones (e.g. when swapping
in a newly-charged battery).
Working with Providence’s facility administration,
the Connexall team added additional
solution features as they became
necessary. The implementation team also
put together a troubleshooting guide, complete
with methodologies specific to the
environment at Providence.
“Connexall has improved our workflow and the safety of our staff and patients. It’s incredibly reliable and easy to use.”
- Tom Clancey
Director, Environmental Sciences
Providence Healthcare
THE CONNEXALL SOLUTION
The final implementation used Connexall to
integrate six disparate systems through one
simple, easy-to-learn interface:
- Rauland Responder IV Nurse Call system
- SpectraLink IP wireless telephone system
- Wide area pager system
- RBH Axiom access control system and EXI patient wandering tags
- An in-house email server used to relay outgoing email notifications
- An in-house database server to facilitate near-time activity data and custom end-user reporting
NURSE CALL
When a resident activates their bedside nurse call,
near-time notification is delivered directly to the appropriate
staff person’s SpectraLink NetLink handset,
regardless of where they are situated in the home.
This eliminates the need to disseminate alert information
from a single receiving point and physically
locate an appropriate solution or staff member.
RESIDENT WANDERING
Residents with wandering tags are categorized as either
high or low risk. High-risk wandering residents
are restricted to their own cluster – the house where
they reside. They are restricted from all exit doors and
certain hallways. Alarms are triggered when high risk
residents are near one of these zones. Additionally,
elevators are locked for high risk resident alarms. Low
risk wandering residents can access common facilities
and use elevators, but they are not allowed to enter
any other resident cluster. Access is also restricted to
perimeter doors, stairwells and basements.
Two alarms are triggered when a tag is detected in a
restricted zone: the Resident Wandering alarm with
the patients room number is sent to the applicable
nurse’s wireless’ phone. The assignment of these
alarms corresponds to that of the nurse call assignments,
so that the same nurse is alerted regardless of
whether a patient makes a request via the nurse call
system or has entered an area they are not supposed
to be in. The location alarm indicating the zone
where the tag is located is sent to the pagers worn by
security guards.
In each case, predefined escalation rules mean that all alerts are automatically sent to backup personnel if the responsible nurse does not acknowledge within a pre-set timeframe.
To cancel a triggered alarm, the ID badge of the
most responsible nurse will be swiped at the proximity
reader closest to where the resident breached a
threshold. This is followed by a cancellation event at
the RBH console captured by Connexall. The alarm
will then stop ringing on the wireless phone and all
escalation processes cease.
The Connexall team worked closely with Providence
staff to design a solution that met their specific needs
– in this case, keeping residents safe – and took into
account their specific workflow. Providence wanted
the different levels of escalation to be easily identifiable, so the Connexall team created a ring-tone
system that indicates primary, secondary, and backup
escalations. Providence also utilizes Connexall’s
unique automated scheduling application, which allows
for the redirection of alerts to specified phones
when an employee goes on his or her scheduled
break, using a predetermined swing shift schedule.
CONNEXALL DELIVERS: RESULTS SUMMARY
Ultimately, response times were dramatically reduced
and resident care quality continues to improve significantly. Providence’s target response times range
between 3 and 5 minutes depending on the type of
alert. Since Connexall provides automatic escalation,
any notification that is sent to a busy caregiver will be
automatically re-routed to a secondary caregiver, if
no response is received within a predefined time limit,
making it easier to respond to wandering patients
or patient requests within an acceptable time.
“Connexall is the bridge that helps us use our resources more eff ectively and efficiently.”
- Tom Clancey
Director, Environmental Sciences
Providence Healthcare
