Hospitals currently assign staff or hire non-medical personnel to visually observe patients at risk for falls, wandering, pulling out tubes, or other forms of self-injury. This white paper explains how healthcare facilities can take advantage of the Cisco Virtual Patient Observation solution to lower staff costs without compromising patient safety:
- Instead of sitting in or just outside the patient's room, trained staff work in an operations center, monitoring high-definition video from one or more patients.
- Seeing a situation that requires intervention, the staff member is able to notify appropriate personnel using the methods the facility has selected, including two-way voice or video, text, audio alerts, paging, integration with existing nurse call systems or prerecorded voice messages.
- The Cisco Virtual Patient Observation solution does not record video, avoiding privacy concerns, and the cameras can be turned off during the patient care process, based on policy.
- Healthcare facilities that currently hire staff to observe patients in their rooms can potentially recoup the investment in the Cisco Virtual Patient Observation solution through reduced staffing.