Using a realtime location system (RTLS) from Stanley Healthcare, the Peninsula Regional Medical Center (PRMC), Salisbury, Md, has been able to improve its management of specialty beds and substantially reduce its bed-rental expenses.
The details of how the facility used the AeroScout asset management system to achieve these gains are available in a case study available on the manufacturer’s website (PDF; registration required).
As noted in the case study, the hospital was already using the RTLS product for tracking other assets, and saw bed rental as a new opportunity for cost savings. “Our Central Sterile Processing team was spending too much time searching for specialty beds,” says Eddie Conklin, manager of Central Sterile Processing. “We also realized that PRMC was overspending on bed rentals. An analysis showed that the hospital owns enough specialty beds to cover about 95 percent of demand.” ?
Historically, PRMC was spending as much as $6,000 per month to rent specialty beds. After implementing RTLS to tackle the problem, Conklin says, “we seldom get calls for rental specialty beds unless they are truly needed.” He adds that rental volume has declined to almost zero.
