by A. Seraphina Lin
Nov 17, 2008

ALEXANDRIA, Va -- When a patient needs a nurse, time is critical. Hospitals around the country are responding by putting in place new technology that requires nurses to wear a locator badge for real-time tracking.

Hill-Rom Services Inc., a leader in this technology, created the COMLinx Nurse Communication Module --  and business is booming, according to account executive Gregg Fitzpatrick.

“Right now, if you look at our market, we’re probably growing about 20 percent easily across the country,” Fitzpatrick said.

The badges function like a GPS device by tracking each nurse’s movements throughout the day. But not everyone has embraced this new technology.

“Our nurses are extremely suspicious of them,” said Mary MacDonald, health care director for the American Federation of Teachers, which represents 50,000 nurses nationwide. Locator badges show management’s distrust of their nurses, MacDonald said.

But hospital managers are quick to point out the benefits of the system. “We could more quickly identify where someone was, versus having to walk around the unit trying to find someone, or calling overhead disturbing the patients and creating more noise,” said Fran Charlton, senior director of nursing operations at Inova Alexandria hospital.

According to Fitzpatrick, the system averages about $2,500 per bed but prices can vary depending on the layout of the unit.

“I don’t know why in this time of short budgets hospitals would choose to spend huge amounts of money on a tracking system for their nurses,” the AFT's MacDonald said.

The system works by relaying every nurses’ position to the front desk and to intercoms placed on the walls and rooms of the hospital. When a patient needs a nurse, the front desk locates the nurse though the system, calls the nurse through an intercom at that location, and tells the nurse what the patient needs. Nurses can also use the intercoms to locate and call each other if they need additional assistance.

“It’s really just saved me unnecessary steps,” said Tracey Roberts, a registered nurse at Inova Alexandria hospital.

The system also records when a patient calls and the response time to that call. Hospital can use the data to determine how to staff a unit depending on the volume of calls, Fitzpatrick said.

But union representatives are concerned that hospitals will use records of tracking response time to discipline nurses. “How much more stressful does that make the job and how much more difficult to retain nurses who already find the conditions too stressful, “ MacDonald said.

Discipline is not the main purpose of the system, Charlton said, and nurses on her staff seem pleased with the extra help. “It’s meant to make sure we meet our patient’s needs in a timely manner and that’s really what it’s all about,” Charlton said.