Texoma Medical Center Selects Skytron, Powered by Awarepoint, for Their Real-time Location System (RTLS)

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. and SAN DIEGO, Sept. 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Skytron Inc., a division of the KMW Group,  and Awarepoint Corp. today announced Texoma Medical Center has implemented the companies' Real-time Location System (RTLS)  to automatically track and manage over 200 hospital assets, as well as to monitor all visiting vendor sales representatives within the 318,000 square foot hospital facility.

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"Optimizing utilization of our critical mobile assets including IV pumps, telemetry packs, wound vacs, wheelchairs and security tracking of visiting vendor sales representatives were key goals for Texoma Medical Center," said Gregg Stepp, director of supply chain operations at Texoma Medical Center. " RTLS asset tracking and management provides us a better way to deliver care, locate our assets and use them more efficiently, as well as increase security hospital-wide to ensure patient and staff safety."

With easy access to the RTLS system via a desktop icon, all authorized employees can easily locate the nearest available equipment in real-time.  Wireless temperature tracking is also provided for all nourishment refrigerators, freezers, drug cabinets, blood bank, warming cabinets and cold rooms.

"This eliminates nursing having to keep a daily manual temperature log,"  continued Stepp. "In addition, all vendor sales representatives are issued a tracking tag when visiting Texoma Medical Center. This allows our staff to monitor the location of visiting sales representatives throughout the hospital and to notify staff if someone enters a restricted point."

Since RTLS implementation, Texoma Medical Center has experienced numerous documented benefits, including:

• Increased visibility to evaluate actual equipment utilization and reduce capital equipment purchase needs
• Tracking rental equipment and reducing rental expenses
• Dramatically decreasing staff search time for missing equipment
• Accelerated completion of  biomedical scheduled preventative maintenance
• Documented improvement in satisfaction of hospital staff

"We're honored to be a part of Texoma Medical Center's RTLS asset tracking and enhanced security," stated Bryant Broder, senior product manager for RTLS Solutions at Skytron.  "Skytron Asset Manager, powered by Awarepoint, will help improve workflows along with providing cost saving equipment utilization benefits, positively impacting operational efficiency and patient care."

The speed and ease of a complete and reliable installation were also important to Texoma Medical Center. The 100% wireless ZigBee-based RTLS infrastructure from Awarepoint enabled quick installation without disrupting patient care.  Installation began on January 18, 2010 and the facility was completed on February 17, 2010.  The Awarepoint RTLS network enables true hospital-wide awareness not only at the patient-room level, but also provides persistent accuracy across TMC's entire hospital footprint, in open areas, hallways, nursing stations, etc.

Note to Editors: Gregg Stepp will be speaking at RFID in Healthcare East on October 12, 9:45 AM at the Radisson Plaza-Warwick Hotel in Philadelphia:  

Topic: Tracking and Managing Assets with RFID

Texoma Medical Center, an acute-care hospital located in Denison, Texas, is utilizing an enterprise-wide RTLS to track and manage mobile medical equipment and monitor temperature-sensitive assets. In this session, learn how the hospital is lowering costs in the areas of capital budget reallocation and monthly rental savings, while reducing the incidence of lost or missing assets. Also hear how the medical center is using temperature-monitoring tags to proactively manage the temperatures of nourishment and medication refrigerators throughout its facility.

About Texoma Medical Center

Texoma Medical Center (TMC) is an acute care hospital with more than 160 affiliated physicians.  The main hospital campus is located in Denison, Texas.  Texoma Medical Center offers major specialty services including open heart surgery and neurosurgery.  Advanced resources such as certified trauma care support TMC's role as a regional specialty center.  TMC is renowned for its respected Centers of Excellence including:  Texoma Heart Center, Reba McEntire Center for Rehabilitation, TexomaCare primary and specialty health centers, TMC Behavioral Health Center and the Women & Children's Center. For more information, visit www.texomamedicalcenter.net.

About Awarepoint

Awarepoint provides real-time location solutions (RTLS) to hospitals nationwide.  Analogous to indoor GPS, RTLS is used to track location of assets and people in indoor environments and is particularly effective for tracking mobile equipment assets in hospitals.  Awarepoint solutions include its real-time awareness platform, firmware, active RFID tags, sensors, and bridges.  Requiring no hardwiring, Awarepoint's "plug and track" ZigBee-based wireless sensor network is a fully managed service, including hardware, software, remote monitoring and maintenance. The company is headquartered in San Diego, California and serves its hospital customers across the United States through a distribution agreement with Skytron. Track us down at www.awarepoint.com.

Awarepoint Supporting Resources

Read, Visit, Contribute at The Awarepoint Blog: RTLS Hospital Asset Tracking and Beyond

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About Skytron

Skytron medical equipment is designed to optimize healthcare delivery with innovative and flexible solutions that advance patient care and safety, improve workflows and efficiency, boost productivity and maximize the quality of patient care,  including  RTLS awareness management, hybrid rooms, LED surgical lighting, surgical tables,  booms, digital OR integration and more.  Skytron has partnered with Awarepoint as the exclusive sales, distribution and support for RTLS awareness in the U.S. hospital market.  For more information, visit www.skytron.us.

About ZigBee: Control your world

ZigBee offers green and global wireless standards connecting the widest range of devices to work together intelligently and help you control your world. The ZigBee Alliance is an open, non-profit association of approximately 400 members driving development of innovative, reliable and easy-to-use ZigBee standards. The Alliance promotes worldwide adoption of ZigBee as the leading wirelessly networked, sensing and control standard for use in consumer, commercial and industrial areas. For more information, visit: www.ZigBee.org.

SOURCE Skytron; Awarepoint