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After Wireless
Before Wireless Lynden has also installed an electronic time and attendance system for staff that records their attendance through a simple fingerprint scan. This has made paper timesheets redundant. Staff are also able to log on remotely to apply for leave and provide availability for shifts. Ann Turnbull, Lynden’s CEO was the driving force behind the ICT transformation. Her initial interest was in the benefit she could see from the medications management system. “I saw that at a conference and it was clear to me how much time we would save and how it would almost eliminate medication errors,” Ms Turnbull says.
“Just to set that up was the expensive part because we had to go fully wireless. For that to work properly is where the investment came in, but once you are already wireless the add-on bits aren’t anywhere near so much.” Lynden’s investment was substantial with a total of half a million dollars spent. This includes the infrastructure, Vocera and medications management – but you assess the cost in line with the benefit, particularly the convenience for nurses of the Vocera devices and the time saved on medication rounds, the return on investment is clear, she says. “Nursing staff just carry one device with them in which they can make and receive phone calls, they can receive nurse calls on it, they can talk to the residents, and they can locate each other. There are no telephones and they don’t have to carry a pager or any of that sort of thing, just the Vocera”. “With the medications management system, the main benefit is that the nurses have saved at least an hour every medication round. It has almost eliminated medication errors – that wasn’t a major issue for us but it’s still something you don’t want to have”. “And because we set that up and the staff really found the benefit from the medication management and the Vocera, they have embraced every other system introduction because they’re not scared of it.” Ms Turnbull cites the support she has received from her board as critical to the investment. “One of the real benefits of a place like ours is that most of the board members have got now or have had a family member living here, so they know what’s good and they could see the benefits of the medication management system and the Vocera system,” she says.