Galion Community Hospital
Improves Code Reporting with the Status Alert Module (SAM)
Description
Galion Community Hospital in Galion, Ohio's mission is to improve the health and well being of those served. The vision is to be recognized for providing high quality healthcare in a cost effective manner. The hospital strives to put patients first, for continuous improvement and, to succeed through teamwork.Opportunity
While striving for continuous improvement, Galion Community Hospital expanded its facility by adding a new surgical center with four surgery suites. The existing hospital building was utilizing Dukane's nurse call system. The nurse call system was integrated to an overhead paging system for code reporting purposes. This limited the paging code call system to external speakers only. The IT staff did not want to run analog speakers to the surgical center, so they choose to explore alternative solutions.
When researching potential solutions, the IT staff looked for a system that could leverage their Cisco VoIP infrastructure, and that could be expanded over time to include other types of awareness alerting functions.
Solution
Status Solutions worked in conjunction with Cisco Systems technology partner IPcelerateTM to deliver an alert and notification solution to Galion Community Hospital. A direct link was created between their Dukane nurse call system, the IPsessionTM appliance provided by IPcelerateTM, the Status Alert Module (SAM) software provided by Status Solutions and resident on the IPsessionTM appliance, and the Cisco IP phone system.
IPsessionTM was installed to tie together the Dukane nurse call system and the existing Cisco infrastructure. SAM serves as the head-end to deliver code reporting. When code alerts are triggered a text message is sent to the appropriate Cisco phones. This allows the existing hospital building with overhead speakers to be directly tied to the new surgical area without overhead speakers, with everyone receiving the proper alerts via the best communications means.
"With the new technology, we were successfully able to tie together and seamlessly integrate old and new technology, therefore allowing our existing facility and new surgical area to work together," comments Andrew Daniels, Director of Information Systems at Galion Community Hospital.
Summary
The solution provided integrates to the existing nurse call system, leverages the existing Cisco infrastructure, streamlines code reporting, directly ties alarms and alerts to the hospital's communication systems.
Partnership
SAM, resident on the IPsessionTM appliance provided by IPcelerateTM, gives Galion Community Hospital the ability to extend far beyond its current use of the system for code reporting.
SAM has the ability to integrate to multiple systems including nurse call, security, and fire panels. SAM can serve as the eyes and ears of the entire hospital and give every system and person including patients, a voice. Alert messages can be delivered anywhere, anytime, and in any order or method. With wireless capabilities, pull cords, fixed panic buttons and mobile panic buttons can be utilized or provided that push the alert to the appropriate caregiver. The SAM software can send the response in a pre-programmed format and track and report on the response. SAM also has the ability to see the alert via video camera in any area of the hospital necessary.
SAM has given Galion Community Hospital the ability to expand and update their in-place nurse call system while at the same time leveraging their existing Cisco infrastructure. With the IPsessionTM appliance and SAM, Galion Community Hospital has the technology to continue to improve their processes well into the future.
