Female lab technician using a hand held scanner

RFID Asset and Patient Tracking in Healthcare

September 25, 2023

Reduce costs, improve efficiency, increase patient safety

To you and your clinical staff, quality patient care is a mission. To your patients, it is an experience measured in time and attention – an experience that begins the moment they enter your facility and often continues long after they leave it.

How RFID tracking helps you deliver better care
Know where critical equipment is • 10% – 20% mobile assets are lost or stolen • 75% of scheduled maintenance time is spent looking for item
Manage inventory levels & costs effectively • 30% — the amount most organizations over-purchase in consumables to prevent running short • 40% — typical pharmacy spend on rush orders and non-contact items
Spend more time on patient care • 10% – 30% of nurses’ time is spent searching for portable medical equipment
Respectfully keep vulnerable patients safe • RFID helps balance patient freedom with patient safety

What is RFID?

Radio frequency identification, or RFID, uses radio waves to communicate between an RFID reader and an electronic tag affixed to an object. Each tag is encoded with a unique identifier that is tied to a database. Tags can be read using handheld or mobile readers, shelf or tabletop readers, or readers that can be installed at doorways or in custom configurations.

Where RFID supports healthcare

Equipment/asset tracking
Item-level inventory visibility
Supply chain management
Patient/people monitoring
Staff utilization
Document/data file management
IT asset tracking
Specimen and test samples
Medication verification
Ambulance inventory
Hazardous materials and waste
Clinical trials
Loss prevention

Surgical instrument tracking
Equipment and patient tracking portal solutions
Smart cabinet / smart shelf solutions for medication and high-value supply inventory control
Operating room case/cart tracking and management
Patient triage, transport and identification as well as family reunification during a mass evacuation

Getting the right fit

There is no “one size fits all” solution for tracking and managing equipment, assets and patients in a healthcare environment. The key is choosing the right technology for your application – the one that provides the information you need, as often as you need it, at a price point you can justify.

Getting started

Contact your DCM Healthcare Solutions account executive. They will work with you to help you assess:

• What are your points of greatest pain?
• What do you need to change?
• What data do you really need (vs. what would be nice to know)?
• Does the cost-benefit potential look positive?
• Is RFID the right solution?

DCM provides some of Canada’s largest healthcare organizations with compliant, secure enterprise solutions. Through our highly experienced team and powerful technology, we improve your information systems so you can keep your focus on caring for patients.