CASE STUDY

RWJBarnabas HealthNew Jersey’s Biggest Healthcare Provider Drives Operational Efficiency, Financial Savings, and Patient and Staff Safety with Large Scale Rollout of RTLS

THE TEAMRWJBarnabas Health has a clear vision for healthcare delivery: being a High Reliability Organization (HRO) offering the highest-quality care and the safest experience for patients and employees. The clinical engineering team, led by Assistant Vice President Edgar Newall, is a key group in realizing this vision of continual improvement and optimization.

THE CHALLENGEIn fact, RWJ’s journey to HRO began almost a decade ago, as it wrestled with the immense cost and complexity of successfully operating large healthcare environments, requiring the safe and efficient organization of numerous staff, patients, equipment, and medicines. As an organization ahead of its time, RWJ understood the value of investing in Real Time Location System (RTLS) technology, providing a live fix on the position of every piece of its healthcare jigsaw, enabling swift action to protect and bring those vital pieces together.

THE RESULTRTLS has transformed RWJ’s day-to-day operations, with over 16,400 tags preventing the loss of $9 million worth of devices, medication, and food. Over 2,300 staff members across four hospitals wear RTLS badges that allow them to quickly send a staff duress alert for immediate assistance.

About RWJBarnabas HealthRWJBarnabas Health is New Jersey’s largest integrated healthcare delivery system, employing 35,000 dedicated professionals in 11 acute hospitals and numerous community-based facilities throughout the state, providing treatment and services to more than three million patients a year.

Solutions Implemented• Asset Management

• Environmental Monitoring

• Staff Protection

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STANLEY Healthcare Case Study: RWJBarnabas Health

An Eye-Opening SimulationRWJBarnabas Health’s journey with RTLS was born out of crisis – fortunately a simulated crisis, not a real one – but one that nonetheless dramatically highlighted the difference that real-time visibility made to safe and effective patient care.

With the impacts of 9/11 still casting long shadows around the world, in 2012 the US Department of Defense commissioned a study into the role of technology in a hospital’s ability to respond to a mass-casualty event.

It selected Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey, as the location and provided a grant for its administrators to install and trial STANLEY Healthcare’s RTLS platform, ready for the simulated event, featuring 300 volunteer ‘casualties’.

After running the event, both with and without RTLS, the results were profound. Today, Edgar Newell, Assistant Vice President at RWJBarnabas Health, can recall his reaction with crystal clarity.

“It was so eye-opening,” says Edgar. “We flipped the switch and the RTLS system worked straightaway, it was very exciting. People were saying ‘wow, this is wonderful, that’s not where I thought it was, it’s actually over here’, and the system is accurate to a few feet.

“With RTLS, we were able to move all 300 patients through the process smoothly. It was a drastic change and proved the value of being able to instantly and accurately track the location of all our important assets, and ensure that they were in the right place at the right time. Even better, we could see immediately that, not only was this a great result for a mass casualty event, RTLS could also transform the day-to-day operation of our entire healthcare system.”

Fast forward almost a decade, and the RTLS solution has become embedded across multiple departments in 10 of the 11 hospitals in the RWJBarnabas Health network.

Efficiently Managing Assets Today, with more than 100,000 medical devices, collectively worth many millions of dollars, dispersed and constantly moving around the RWJBarnabas Health network, keeping track of their location, carrying out planned maintenance, and ensuring that they’re not lost, accidentally or through theft, is a major challenge.

When staff have to go looking for a vital piece of equipment – such as a ventilator or infusion pump – those lost minutes, when multiplied many times during a typical day across the RWJ system, can have a major negative impact on overall productivity, the patient experience, and staff wellbeing.

“Currently we have close to 16,400 assets tagged in seven hospitals. So far, we’ve saved close to $9 million in devices, medications, and food.”

EDGAR NEWELL ASSISTANT VICE PRESIDENT RWJBARNABAS HEALTH

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STANLEY Healthcare Case Study: RWJBarnabas Health

“Today, we can simply use the system to locate an asset in seconds,” explains Edgar. “I just don’t know how we managed without it.”

It also uses the RTLS system to manage inventory shrinkage. It has saved $1.7 million in capital expenditure by stopping or alerting when an asset leaves the building but also saved on the unnecessary spend to replace the lost assets.

Protecting Vital Supplies and Care Areas

RWJ has also deployed the same technology to monitor lab and pharmacy refrigerators and freezers, as well as food storage containers and units, for any small changes in temperature that could compromise vital drugs or food supplies.

The humidity and temperature of key medical areas, such as OR suites, are also constantly monitored to ensure optimum conditions for staff and patients alike.

Monitoring and protecting refrigerators and their contents is especially important for RWJ as it’s a designated mega site for New Jersey’s COVID-19 vaccination program. By the end of 2021 RWJ expects to deploy an additional 3,000 temperature tags across its health system.

“In the times we’re living in, ensuring that we have medications safe and available for patients at all times is huge.” Edgar notes that real-time environmental monitoring has also helped the bottom line: “The financial savings alone in medications has paid for the system three times over at this point.”

Tackling Workplace Violence Head OnViolence against healthcare workers is a longstanding problem for hospitals everywhere, made worse by the stresses of the COVID-19 pandemic. STANLEY Healthcare’s RTLS technology is now enabling RWJ to provide additional protection for its people in the form of a wearable, personal alarm that shows exactly where a vulnerable employee is, triggering swift intervention by colleagues and security personnel.

Protecting colleagues in potentially dangerous situations is a key priority for Edgar and his team.

In Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, over 2,300 staff members are armed with a simple and discrete way to trigger an RTLS alert with their real-time location, enabling support to be dispatched within seconds.

“The value of being able to care for our colleagues is immeasurable, right? The satisfaction of being able to save people before something bad happens has been wonderful.”

Recycling Savings into Updated EquipmentEdgar states that STANLEY Healthcare’s RTLS platform has delivered benefits across the board, from pure financial savings to a host of operational efficiencies, patient experience improvements, and staff safety and wellbeing enhancements. It’s even led to changes in the way RWJ’s buildings are designed and built.

“Currently we have close to 16,400 assets tagged in seven hospitals and we track every single event where we end up saving something,” explains Edgar. “So far, we’ve saved close to $9 million in devices, medications, and food.”

Acting on Priceless DataAs an early adopter of RTLS, RWJ is also reaping the benefits of long experience, vast quantities of priceless data, and a great partnership with STANLEY Healthcare to unlock additional, long-term benefits from the platform. RTLS provides a unique picture of how medical facilities operate, where equipment is used, and how assets and people move around.

Armed with this solid evidence, RWJ has reorganized the way assets are stored and positioned and has even re-engineered aspects of its buildings to improve speed and ease of movement, saving vital minutes for staff and patients. RTLS has even been used in scenario planning with local New Brunswick law enforcement, to guide officers around the building should they ever need to attend an event in the University Hospital.

“We’re proud of what we’ve achieved with RTLS,” concludes Edgar. “We’re constantly striving to be a High Reliability Organization, which is very tough to achieve, but we’ve made huge progress and STANLEY Healthcare has had a big role to play in helping us on our journey.”

STANLEY Healthcare Case Study: RWJBarnabas Health

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Keys to RWJBarnabas Health’s SuccessEdgar Newell, Assistant Vice President, shares these personal reflections:

• Don’t be afraid to go big. We could see instantly the tremendous value of tagging our medical devices and other assets, and when we turned the system on it worked immediately. So, we don’t see the need for long term, small scale trials, we knew we could make a big impact very quickly.

• Take colleagues with you. The benefits were clear and obvious, and we wanted to share those with colleagues as soon as possible so that everyone knew what was happening and could join us on the journey.

• Use the data. When you build such a detailed picture of what really happens in a big hospital, that information can deliver fundamental improvements in the way people and assets are organized.

• Never stop exploring. The Internet of Things (IoT) is hugely exciting and the possibilities for applying RTLS technology are endless, so challenge yourself and your technology partner to see how its use can be extended even further.

Solution Guide• Asset management. Real-time management of the location and status of mobile medical equipment to increase

patient safety, asset utilization, and staff efficiency.

• Environmental and temperature monitoring. Around-the-clock wireless monitoring of temperature and other conditions to protect pharmaceuticals, vaccines, blood products, and other environment-sensitive items and areas.

• Staff protection. Wi-Fi connected badges give healthcare workers the ability to quickly call for help or assistance without attracting attention and provides alerts and real-time location update to responding staff.

“STANLEY Healthcare are an incredible partner, they constantly listen and explore ideas with us, all with the aim of getting even better results.”EDGAR NEWELL ASSISTANT VICE PRESIDENT

RWJBARNABAS HEALTH