Real stories about how tracking assets have saved time and improved patient outcomes.
When you install Pinpointer’s simple indoor equipment tracking solution into a hospital it can make a real difference to a diverse set of users. Some of the benefits are obvious, such as improved patient outcomes when staff are able to find the equipment they need quickly in a time-critical situation. Reducing the frustration and time staff spend searching for equipment is another obvious one.
Other benefits are more subtle, even behavioural. For example we’re seeing that Nurse Unit Managers are happy to let equipment be "out in the wild" and not under lock and key for when they might need it because with Pinpointer, they know they’ll be able to find it immediately when the time comes. Items are being returned more reliably because the borrowers know that the item is tracked and even dispelling ‘myths’ that perpetuate about who takes equipment and doesn’t return it. Below is a selection of real stories from the front line of hospital workers across two hospitals who have been using Pinpointer for over 6 months. (Not their real names) Meena’s a Nursing Admin who manages the general pool of Bariatric Equipment. She’s tasked with managing, finding and distributing the equipment. Pinpointer has enabled her to move away from daily excel printouts with pen/liquid paper as her current record of where equipment is. She’s now finding what she wants at any moment, anywhere around the hospital. Ben’s an Environmental Services Supervisor, responsible for tasking his ES team to fetch and deliver equipment (Beds, Regulators etc) and to respond to calls for it. Pinpointer’s reduced the search time for equipment to zero. Ben’s team currently use Pinpointer in their command centre on PCs but shortly they’ll be using Pinpointer on all of their new hospital-provided android phones. Ben has tagged up gas regulators, beds, wheelchairs, bolsters, lifters, pumps and more. Gloria works in the Operating Theatres. She’s tasked with making sure critical equipment in theatres is available when they need it and also with recovering it from where it ends up in the hospital. Within a week of deploying Pinpointer she debunked the myth that other wards took their Calf Compressors. Pinpointer enabled them to show that the equipment was almost always returned but not always to where they expected it. This difused a point of friction immediately. Gloria’s looking forward to further deployment of Pinpointer’s next generation of location accuracy algorithms when she’ll be able to locate equipment with even more precision, such as in specific areas of theatres like anaesthetic bays etc. Frances is Nurse Unit Manager in a rehabilitation ward. She deals with palliative patients. One of her concerns is where her Niki Pumps (a syringe pump used for the consistent delivery of drugs) are. Knowing whether they are in her ward or if they have disappeared elsewhere is of huge importance. She recently had an occupational therapist that wanted to borrow a pump and thought that he’d returned their last one. Frances was able to show him that he still had the pump, but she was willing to lend another because she established that their other one was still with the borrower and there was an expectation that they’d get both back soon. Gary, one of the Environmental Services team, has started putting tags into bolsters and mattresses that need to go together with a bariatric bed because they very often become separated ..... and if they’re split up you can’t use any of it. The result...a useless VERY expensive bed! Greta works in Theatres too. She’s tagged up all of their PCA pumps which regularly ‘disappear.’ Now she now knows where they’ve all ended up and she knows where to go to fetch them. With this real-time visibility, she’s the first person who has volunteered the concept that they’re not ‘Theatre’s pumps’ ...they belong to all departments— perhaps it doesn’t matter who’s pumps they are provided they have access to enough pumps. Her biggest concern is just knowing where they are when she needs them and Pinpointer provides her with this information.
Elizabeth, a senior manager, periodically wants to know where particular high value assets are. In particular, the hospital's new (and very expensive) non-folding Stryker wheelchairs. It was taking her 40 minutes or more to find a lost chair. Now she has perpetual visibility of all of the hospital's assets.
Ali needs to be able to find a hoverjack (used for lifting up bariatric patients) urgently when they need it. (You never need a hoverjack un-urgently!). Recently after spending 40 minutes trying to find one, he was unable to and had to resort to using boards for the lift which put multiple staff at risk of injury plus the patient had to spend 40 minutes on the floor. He certainly never wants a repeat of that and now, with Pinpointer installed, he knows where hoverjacks are at all times and can access them immediately.
Paul in Environmental Services no longer has to ask his team to find equipment if it’s already on the ward because they can just look at Pinpointer and say, “it’s already there”. This saves many unnecessary call-outs since staff often don’t realise the equipment they want is already close to them.
Debbie who is in charge of the specialist Bariatric equipment previously spent half of her days looking for the bariatric equipment spread around the wards. Often (very) the response would be, “nope, we don’t have it”. Now with Pinpointer she doesn’t have to go through this. It’s increased the level of trust as well, because there’s no question about where equipment is, so no false information.
Feedback from everyone is that they enjoy the user-friendly simplicity of Pinpointer and love being able to shorthand the names of the equipment they’re looking for in searches — not having to type in a full name or number.
Key to Pinpointer’s success has been simplicity and clear value. Training takes very little time. Tagging items is a breeze and if the hospitals want to track equipment in more zones they can add extra readers and create more zones themselves.
