The Facility
CHI St. Luke’s Health – Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center (formerly St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital) has been a leader in the Texas healthcare community and on the forefront of new advances in heart health and technology for more than 60 years. CHI St. Luke’s Health (formerly St. Luke’s Episcopal Health System) contributes to enhancing community health by delivering superior value in high-quality, cost-effective acute care. As a community teaching hospital and a tertiary referral centre, the Hospital serves both the greater Houston area and the global community.
Challenges
When it came time to begin renovations on their medical tower in Houston, they wanted a Nurse Call system with leading-edge technology. Ensuring faster response times by nurses to patients was one of the main requirements for the new Nurse Call system. St. Luke’s was looking for a solution with a flexible range of call types, alarms, and display options that embrace today’s IP technology.
Solution
St. Luke’s chose Austco to install an all-in-one patient station, which provided the flexibility and range of options needed to help facilitate the first steps in faster response times. Each patient station can be configured for a private or semi-private room with varying levels of call types. This allows the nursing staff to discern between patient calls, staff assist, and code calls with ease. Having “clean mode” and “cord out” distinction allows for fewer false calls.
A favorite feature of the nursing staff is the colored alphanumeric LED Annunciators. The LED Annunciators provide an audio and visual notification of all active calls by displaying a text message with the alarm information, as well as sounding an accompanying alert tone based on the priority of the call.
Outcome
In November 2012, St. Luke’s received its ISO 9001:208 certification for compliance with the quality management system under the American National Standards. The three key requirements that St. Luke’s was able to achieve were providing consistent patient care, improving patient satisfaction, and continually improving goal-based performance. St. Luke’s has been able to fully implement their Austco Nurse Call system in seven areas of the medical tower (160 beds).
“ATIntegration [an Austco Retail partner] has been able to customize the Austco Nurse Call System to fit the needs of this area of the facility by making the system as quiet as possible so as ot to disturb the patients,” said Debbie Mathews is the Nurse Manager on the VIP Floor of St. Luke’s. “As soon as a call is activated, a message is sent directly to pagers that each staff carry with them. This ensures fast response times for staff. Two years ago, we were not talking about response times. Today, I can go and produce a report to show the response times. I love the system, and Ron’s exceptional service; he goes above and beyond.”
Austco Retail Partner: Advanced Technology Integration
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