The technology makeover of the healthcare industry is coming to some Orange County hospitals.
As hospitals upgrade facilities or expand their campuses, they’re turning to wireless networking in a bid to better communication and the flow of medical information.
St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton already has tried and adapted wireless networking, said Lee Penrose, the hospital’s chief financial officer.
“We’re wired throughout the house,” he said. “We’re wired for wireless, so to speak.”
St. Jude’s doctors, nurses, therapists and technicians have access to wireless phones and even rolling computer carts with wireless links.
Cisco Systems Inc. makes St. Jude’s wireless phones.
“It’s all about getting not just data, but voice to the caregivers when they need it,” Penrose said. “Now, we have the ability to have our caregivers carry their phones around with them, just like a cell phone.”
Less Paging
The phones help cut down on the use of paging systems and noise they bring, Penrose said.
“We have a lot of therapists,respiratory therapists, physical therapists,” he said. “In the lab we have phlebotomists who carry wireless phones. We’ve got transporters who carry the phones. We have significantly reduced the amount of paging.”
Paging hasn’t gone away entirely, Penrose said.
More technology is due at St. Jude within the next year or so as the hospital readies to open a 115,844-square-foot patient building in 2008 that will boost capacity and help meet California’s earthquake law.
Equipment is set to be electronically tagged for tracing throughout the hospital. A patient paging system could be added to St. Jude’s wireless phone system.
Wireless access for patients and visitors with laptops also could be in the works.
Orange Coast Memorial
Orange Coast Memorial Medical Center in Fountain Valley plans to start using wireless phones that route calls over the Internet this summer, said Danny Asaoka, the hospital’s director of information technology.
One of three local facilities of Long Beach-based Memorial Health Services, Orange Coast also hired Cisco for its Internet phone system.
Canada’s Nortel Networks Inc. competed with Cisco for the work, according to Asaoka.
“We basically came to the conclusion that Cisco would be the best solution,” he said.
Orange Coast won’t be getting rid of its overhead paging for now, Asaoka said.
It might make sense in the future to look at a communications system that doesn’t require it, he said.
Going to Internet calling ties in with another emerging healthcare trend: electronic medical records.
“One (idea) we’re really looking at is one that ties together electronic medical records, our wireless phones and something as basic as a nurse call system,” Asaoka said.
The goal is to get voice and data communications on a single system, he said.
“Voice over IP is going to be where the future’s at,” Asaoka said.
Memorial also runs Saddleback Memorial Medical Center in Laguna Hills and an offshoot in San Clemente.
The hospital operator plans to sell Anaheim Memorial Medical Center to Prime Healthcare Inc. (see story, page 6).
Hoag Memorial
Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach is putting in some wireless phones for clinical workers, said Laura Berger, a hospital spokeswoman.
The hospital, which recently added a women’s health pavilion and plans more expansion, is looking at other wireless networking but hasn’t made any decisions yet, she said. n
