Dogwood Village of Orange County
Improves Staff Efficiency in a Skilled Nursing Environment
Description
Orange County Nursing Home was created in 1970 to provide long term care to older residents of Orange County, Virginia. The facility has recently changed its name to Dogwood Village of Orange County and announced the addition of a 102 bed Assisted Living facility. The Skilled Nursing facility will have 164 beds when the expansion project is complete. The new campus will allow Dogwood Village of Orange County to better serve the needs of older residents requiring assisted, as well as, full-time care.
Opportunity
Dogwood Village of Orange County was seeking to improve the care offered to its residents while at the same time increasing the efficiency of its staff. The existing nurse call system only alerted at a panel at the nurse’s station with antiquated lights and loud buzzers, and did not provide any means for reporting of historical events. A complete replacement of the existing nurse call system was the best solution for Dogwood Village of Orange County.
Solution
Dogwood Village of Orange County chose to partner with Status Solutions. The Situational Awareness Response Assistant (SARA) system is designed to meet complex requirements found in a skilled nursing environment. The SARA system is integrated to the existing nurse call system, and wireless capabilities have also been added to the facility to easily accommodate the resident call buttons which send alerts to the appropriate staff members via pagers, mobile phones, business phones, email, etc.
SARA has been approved to be installed in regulated critical care environments according to the Hospital Signaling and Nurse Call Equipment standard (UL 1069). During this certification process the SARA system underwent strenuous testing and met the necessary requirements to be installed in either general or critical care areas. This demonstrates SARA's ability to bring both traditional nurse call elements, as well as current generation communication tools together into a single solution.
Going Wireless in a Skilled Nursing Environment
The 88 rooms (both private and semi-private) in the skilled nursing facility of Dogwood Village of Orange County are now using SARA's wireless notification devices such as pull stations and cordsets. Wireless devices are proven to be more reliable than the dated wired system devices previously used, due to the fact that they are now being constantly supervised and monitored by SARA. This level of supervision provides residents, family members, staff and management with the peace of mind that if a resident is need of assistance and initiates the wireless device that the proper staff member will be alerted and can then respond in a timely manner.
Improving Staff Efficiency
In a skilled nursing environment like Dogwood Village of Orange County there is a group of Certified Nurse Assistants (CNA) assigned to a specific group of residents. SARA's flexibility allows the appropriate group of CNAs to be paged when a call button is signaled, allowing them to work together as a team more effectively and efficiently. Nurses no longer have to locate the appropriate CNA when needed.
"SARA has allowed our staff to become more efficient and react in a timely manner. SARA allows us to hold staff accountable, as well as empower them to take control of their response to resident's call buttons. We now average less than one minute response time to alerts, which is very encouraging to the staff and our residents," comments Vernon Baker, Dogwood Village of Orange County's Administrator.
Insight via Reporting
SARA allows an escalation path to be created in the event that response times are not met in a timely manner, for example if an alert goes unanswered for five minutes a manager is alerted, and after 20 minutes the administrator is alerted. Even though Dogwood Village of Orange County has not had an occasion to use this capability because of their excellent response rate, they like the accountability the system provides. SARA's reporting capabilities give the management team insight to be able to better manage the staff and validate certain situations if a question arises regarding the level of care being provided.
Creating a Peaceful Environment
With the installation of SARA there is no longer an enunciator panel needed at the nurses' stations, so there is reduced noise. All alerts are sent via pager. This has enabled the facility to be more peaceful and homelike with the addition of wireless paging, as opposed to overhead paging. "The addition of SARA has created a less stressful environment to live and work in," states Vernon Baker.
SUMMARY
The end result is a solution that integrates systems and devices into an efficient and cohesive package that improves resident care and staff productivity and efficiency.
SARA is the natural solution for communities looking to implement state of the art technology solutions across their entire campus regardless of the regulatory criteria required in certain areas. With UL 1069 certification Status Solutions provides a scalable solution that meets the needs of communities as they grow and change to meet the needs of the aging population.
Partnership
With the addition of its new Assisted Living facility, Dogwood Village of Orange County plans to extend SARA's monitoring and alerting capabilities to the new residences planned to complete in the Spring of 2009.
Dogwood Village of Orange County has plans to extend SARA's capabilities to include environmental monitoring of devices such as thermostats, water sensors, smoke detectors, etc. With SARA, if any of these devices sense a sudden environmental change or a system such as a heat pump or refrigeration unit experiences a failure, staff can be alerted in order to address the issue before it becomes a major concern or even an emergency situation.
Dogwood Village of Orange County is also investigating the additional functionality SARA provides for wander awareness which will enable an integrated wander prevention solution that combines versatile alerting, rules based egress, and complete reporting of wandering events.
"We always receive quick responses from Status Solutions' support staff, and are pleased with the excellent customer service we receive," states Vernon Baker.
