Dayton Children’s Hospital, a 155-bed multi-specialty pediatric hospital has deployed Vocera’s hands-free communication badges and a secure texting app throughout its new 260,000-square-foot patient tower. During the move to the new facility, care team members used Vocera technology to stay connected and easily communicate, ensuring a safe and smooth transition of more than 40 children from four units.
The hospital, which has more than 300,000 patient visits a year, has integrated the Vocera hands-free technology with the Hill-Rom® NaviCare® Nurse Call system. Pillow speakers connect patients directly to their nurse via the Vocera badge they are wearing. The child can simply push a button for “pain” or “potty,” and the nurse is alerted with context, enabling the caregiver to respond verbally, immediately and appropriately. Helping care teams improve patient safety, Vocera technology directly integrates with the Hill-Rom NaviCare® Nurse Call system to receive bed exit and chair exit alerts as well as code-blue alarms, ventilators alerts, and a variety of patient calls and requests.
“The children love the Vocera badges. They call them our Star Trek buttons! And our nurses love them, too, because they allow instant communication to the rest of the staff, which is incredibly important in a fast-paced mobile environment.” said Jayne Gmeiner, chief nursing officer at Dayton Children’s Hospital in a statement. “We selected Vocera knowing that the company was aligned with our mission and that its solutions would simplify patient and care team communication. We also knew Vocera could meet our growing and evolving workflow needs now and in the future.”
The Vocera solution also directly integrates with GetWellNetwork, Inc., the leader in Interactive Patient Care (IPC) solutions. When a patient or family member provides a comment or request through GetWellNetwork’s bedside solution, an alert is sent to the child’s nurse. The system can also alert partners in care, including dietary, child life specialists and environmental services, if an issue requires immediate attention.
An integration with Vocera and the hospital’s telephone system also makes it easier and faster for patients or families to connect with a specific caregiver. Using the landline phone in the hospital room, a patient or loved one can simply dial 111 to reach the assigned nurse via their wearable badge, 222 for the certified nursing assistant, or 333 for respiratory therapy.
The hospital has plans for additional integrations between its clinical and communication systems, including interfaces between Vocera technology and the hospital’s EHR and physiologic monitoring systems. With more than 2,400 employees and more than 400 physicians, the hospital also expects to standardize communication across all care teams using the Vocera communication platform to unify disparate people, processes and solutions.
Secure texting using the Vocera smartphone app is also underway among hospital medicine physicians, which is expected to improve communication and collaboration. In addition to allowing users to call or text by name or role, the Vocera smartphone app enables group messages for regulatory walk-through, admissions and consults, using pre-defined messaging templates that promote standards and predictable outcomes. Vocera smartphone app users can easily add others to messaging conversations, and messages can be securely forwarded to other users. The app also enables content management via a Wi-Fi or cellular connection. Additionally, the on-call schedule within the intelligent rules engine ensures proper staffing and communication distribution.
