CAPITAL INVESTMENT-RFID

Capital Investment-RFID

Capital Investment-RFID

Introduction

Effectively and efficiently monitoring and controlling the operations of the entities in a hospital, although difficult, is vital to patient care. The slightest mistake could mean the difference between life and death and, often, lead to vast increases in healthcare costs. Due to the rise in patient awareness and tighter requirements from accreditation and compliance agencies such as the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), hospitals are facing pressure to create equipment visibility. The push for system visibility and assessment has centered the latest buzz in hospital information systems on radio frequency identification (RFID). (Kaplan 1987)

The nation's top healthcare providers have implemented RFID systems for tracking people, assets, and information,. The top five RFID applications in hospitals are asset (equipment) tracking and management, staff tracking/monitoring, patient tracking/monitoring, patient and staff safety, and pharmacy prescription fill. System visibility provided by RFID allows hospitals to improve patient care, reduce costs, and increase safety. Although these healthcare institutions developed internal methods of evaluating RFID programs, estimated returns on investment and shared their experience of implementing RFID systems, there exist few models that provide measurable steps in successful RFID installation and sustainability and/or predict legitimate returns on investment. As a result, in many cases, mandates or market pressures have coerced hospitals towards integration without insights to the long-term implications of RFID. (Walczyk and Burgess 2006)

RFID Will Enhance The Economic Environment of Hospital

Recently the importance of the service industry has increased considerably as the economies in developed countries have expanded towards a service orientation while gradually shrinking on the manufacturing base. Among all service industries, the healthcare sector is perceived to be the fastest growing and the most critical due to the fact that it deals with human life and any deficiency in this sector can cause inevitable and incurable results. Because of the unpredictable service demand and the complex infrastructure of hospitals, quickly locating the critical assets (which ironically have high utilization numbers) has been one of the perpetual problems in the healthcare service industry. (Chen and Chen 2004)

Consider the case where an intensive care unit (ICU) nurse is using an oxygen regulator with a stable patient and is called up to help in an emergency case. She would have to immediately go and take care of the patient in dire need rather than taking the oxygen regulator to its regular storage location. If a consecutive event occurs where the same asset (i.e., oxygen regulator) is needed, it would be hard for another nurse or doctor to locate it in a timely manner because it is not in its regular location, but in the ICU room where it was previously left. Therefore, real-time tracking and information sharing of medical assets emerges as a vital issue. Lack of proper tracking of these critical assets would result in poor service quality, low patient satisfaction, customer churn, loss of revenue and, more tragically, loss of the life of a ...