Tracking hospital beds

It could decrease hospital wait times, free up staff to better focus on patient care, and it will definitely cut down on paper.

New software, specially designed for St. Joseph’s Healthcare in Hamilton simplifies the tracking of available hospital beds. A process that before today required multiple phone calls, riems of printouts, and even the old standby fax machine.

Michelle Joyner is St. Joe’s Patient Flow Manager: “Now I can go to the system and have real time information from all of our different systems anywhere I go at my finger tips. So for example a patient coming out of the operating room today, it would be one phone call for the bed office to book that bed. And then they put that information into the system. And because of this system there are no more phone calls required. No more faxing. So the staff that are in recovery can focus on taking care of the patient and not worrying about the bed assignment. He’ll see it there in real time.”

The new system is aptly called VUE. Program details include how many patients are waiting for beds, how long they’ve been waiting, and how many beds are about to free up. Providing more efficient control of patient flow.