Hospital Improves Patient Safety While Cutting Costs
The Nebraska Medical Center’s new video surveillance solution allows hospital staff to remotely monitor individuals who are on suicide watch, prone to violent outbursts or in critical states of health. Previously, hospital personnel were required to be physically present in the room to watch the at-risk patients.
The Nebraska Medical Center’s new video surveillance solution allows hospital staff to remotely monitor individuals who are on suicide watch, prone to violent outbursts or in critical states of health. Previously, hospital personnel were required to be physically present in the room to watch the at-risk patients.
Training Only Takes a Few Minutes
Sentrixx trained a core group of staff members at the Nebraska Medical Center, including Goltl. They quickly learned how to use the software and perform troubleshooting. Those staff members, in turn, have trained more staff.
“It’s pretty easy software to figure out, so we haven’t had any problems,” says Goltl. “As we have new people coming and going, they really just need to sit down for a few minutes to get training.”
The Nebraska Medical Center now has seven units that are regularly staffed for manning the monitoring stations: two medicine telemetry units, two surgical units, the solid organs and transplant unit, the neurology unit and the cardiology unit.
There are a dozen monitoring stations, some of which are used on a daily basis, while others are only used when there is a need. On average they are monitoring about five to six patients per active monitoring station for a total of 20 to 30 at any given moment. This number fluctuates, and hospital staff can use XProtect to quickly activate and deactivate cameras as needed.
Staff don’t need to look at all the cameras all the time. They only needs to see a camera feed if there is a concern about that patient’s safety. “That was an important factor” says Fenton. “With XProtect, we could take a server for a floor and put 20 cameras on it. A staff member at the monitoring station can ju
st pull up the list of cameras and drag over the cameras they want to see during their shift. In the middle of the night, they can very easily add a camera to the monitoring station when they need to, which is important in a hospital setting where patients move around at all hours.”
Discussing the broad set of advanced system capabilities, Fenton describes what makes the solution right for the Nebraska Medical Center: the comprehensive software is easy to learn and operate.
“The software can use smart technology to mask out an area and send a signal if the person moved beyond that area,” he says. “But with the amount of activity in a hospital room, they really needed something that would be as simple to manage as possible.” 
Cost Will Be Recouped in 7-8 Months
The Nebraska Medical Center can already cite a number of benefits even after such a short period of use. It is too early for them to put a number on how much this has helped in regards to staffing and reducing the facility’s overall spending, but Goltl says they have already seen significant savings.
“I know we have already saved ourselves thousands of dollars, and we anticipate recouping the cost of the cameras within seven or eight months,” she says.
Then there are the people being protected — patients and sometimes staff members.
“We recently had a patient who was somewhat aggressive and agitated,” recalls Goltl. “We placed a person in the room with this patient, but we also decided to keep them on the monitor so the person watching the monitor could tell when the person sitting with that patient needed help. We wanted to make sure they were both safe.”
Campus at a Glance
Campus: Formed in 1997 by combining the operations of University Hospital, Bishop Clarkson Memorial Hospital and their ambulatory care facilities, the Nebraska Medical Center is Nebraska’s largest health-care facility. It employs more than 4,900 employees and has over 1,000 physicians in all major specialties and sub-specialties on staff. More than 350 medical and surgical residents assist in the training and education of 1,000 students on campus in a given year. The Nebraska Medical Center serves patients regionally, including Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota and Missouri with comprehensive oncology, neurology and cardiology programs. It has 624 licensed beds.
Solution: The Nebraska Medical Center partnered with authorized Milestone partner Sentrixx Security Solutions to deploy 299 IQinVision megapixel indoor day/night vandal IP domes and infrared units, and monitoring stations running Milestone XProtect Enterprise IP video surveillance software.
Results: The hospital has reduced its overhead by eliminating the majority of its one-on-one bedside observation staff. There are a dozen monitoring stations located throughout the medical center and each station allows one or two technicians to observe multiple patients simultaneously. In just the first two months of being operational, the video system has streamlined the process for monitoring patients and saved the facility thousands of dollars.
Courtney Dillon Pederson is the PR and communications manager for Milestone.
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- Your IP Video Surveillance Cheat Sheet
- PinnacleHealth Safeguards Hospitals With IP-Based Solutions
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