October 28 - GE Healthcare today announced Methodist Medical Center in Peoria, Ill. deployed GE CARESCAPE ™ Enterprise Access™, supporting its wireless vision to improve patient care and enhance patient safety through expanded patient monitoring. With a single, integrated wireless platform, Methodist Medical Center now provides wireless coverage throughout the facility, enabling it to monitor more patients while increasing the use of cellular phones, PDAs, pagers and laptops at the point of care.

“Previously, cell coverage and wireless access was not reliable on all floors, making it difficult for clinicians to access patient information throughout the facility,” said Methodist Medical Center CIO Ellen Swoger. “GE CARESCAPE Enterprise Access ensures wireless coverage throughout the hospital — helping clinicians have faster, easier access to critical patient information anywhere in the building. Wireless technologies will play a significant role in further enhancing patient safety.  It is easier than ever to deliver the right information to the right person at the right time and place.”

Reducing Costs & Improving Communication with CARESCAPE Enterprise Access
Clinicians in high-acuity environments need reliable and timely access to critical patient information. GE Healthcare’s CARESCAPE portfolio of products addresses this need with a new approach to patient monitoring that integrates patient monitoring devices, communications networks and IT systems to provide easy access to patient information from a variety of devices — wireless, desktop or bedside. Information can flow in real time from telemetry and bedside monitors to electronic medical records (EMRs) and decision support systems. Expanding its telemetry deployment enabled Methodist Medical Center to:

Reduce Costs: expanded telemetry coverage in surgical care units means patients can be monitored in step-down units rather than more resource intensive and high-demand ICU beds.

Improve Patient Mobility: patients now can be monitored throughout the increased telemetry coverage area in the hospital giving them more freedom to move and expand rehabilitation options.

Deliver Flexible Patient Monitoring: telemetry ensures Methodist Medical Center can monitor patients upon entering the emergency room, through transport and throughout inpatient care, helping enhance patient care wherever the patient is located.

Expanding its mobile capabilities throughout the hospital delivered additional patient-care benefits including:

Improved Patient Satisfaction: reliable wireless coverage helps the center meet its goal of responding to all patient requests within two minutes, leading to patient satisfaction rates in the 94th percentile for inpatients from April to June 2008. 

Disruptive Noise Reduced: because communication is conducted using wireless devices, disturbing overhead paging is reduced. 

Powered by MobileAccess and its Wire-it-Once™ infrastructure, CARESCAPE Enterprise Access enables data to be coordinated and managed within one wireless network across an entire enterprise. This includes data on pagers, workstations on wheels, laptops and tablet PCs.  The distributed antenna system allows IT staff to manage potential interference issues before they occur and to quickly add new services and adapt to emerging wireless requirements and future expansions without disrupting operations or interrupting services. Leveraging Enterprise Access, Methodist Medical uses GE Healthcare ApexPro ® CH telemetry system, providing the center with a large-capacity wireless patient monitoring system. 
 
“Traditional patient monitoring systems do not keep pace with the growing demands of our healthcare system: patients are sicker, skilled healthcare workers are fewer in number and regulatory demands are growing,” said Vice President & General Manager of GE Healthcare Monitoring Solutions David Ataide. “Methodist Medical Center is among the leading edge hospitals leveraging GE Healthcare’s CARESCAPE portfolio to turn streams of unorganized patient data into meaningful, easily accessible clinical intelligence. We are proud to support Methodist Medical Center and its goal of providing better patient information to make improved clinical decisions.”