Bed Status

…A Feature of Dalcon Alert

In today’s hectic hospital environment, the demand for inpatient beds frequently exceeds the hospital’s apparent bed supply. We call the bed supply “apparent” because hospitals often have available, unoccupied beds that remain unused.

There are various reasons for this. Often, there is significant time delay between the time a patient is discharged and the time that the newly available bed is communicated to admissions. The cleaning process that occurs after the discharge of a patient generally takes anywhere between half an hour to an hour. Yet, sometimes the available room is accidentally overlooked after the patient has been discharged.

Traditionally, two or more hours expire between the time when a patient is discharged and the time when the room’s availability is communicated to the admissions staff. Bed management procedures do exist, but with standard ADT (admissions-discharge-transfer) procedures, the necessary information that admissions workers need to improve patient flow is not efficiently formatted or communicated.

Dalcon has recognized this need and integrated a solution into our Dalcon Alert product line. Dalcon Alert’s “Bed Status” feature allows staff to monitor any bed’s status in real time.

How Dalcon Alert Bed Status Works

NEW UPDATED Bed Tracking copy Bed Status

     

  1. Located on the face of the Remote Alert Monitor (RAM) is a bed status button. Staff can easily change the status of the bed to three different settings to indicate bed condition:
    • Occupied: Indicates that the bed is currently in use by a patient.
    • Out of Service: Indicates the bed is being cleaned and prepared for next use.
    • Available: Indicates that a bed is ready to receive a patient.
  2. Dalcon Alert automatically updates the display at the nursing station to reflect the realtime bed status.
  3. Simultaneously,bed status is updated at the admissions desk to help maximize patient flow.

As a result, staff is always aware of the status of each bed in the hospital.  Because Dalcon Alert helps ensure better patient flow from admissions to patient rooms, bed turnover time is drastically reduced.