What began as a focused initiative to protect frontline staff in the Emergency Department quickly scaled to broader departments and use cases at Holyoke Medical Center. After a fast, high-impact rollout of Kontakt.io’s RTLS Staff Safety solution, leadership recognized the added value and ROI of the single platform infrastructure to power not only Staff Safety, but also Patient Elopement, and even Asset Management solutions.
The Problem
Like many hospitals today, Holyoke Medical Center — a 198-bed facility in western Massachusetts — recognized the need for a staff safety solution. Incidents of workplace violence (WPV) are rising nationwide, and leadership wanted a fast and reliable way to protect their nurses and clinicians. Of course, implementing a new technology across an entire facility can feel like a heavy lift between budgeting and resourcing, so the team at Holyoke Medical Center wanted a solution that was easily scalable from a vendor who could add value as a longterm technology partner.
The Solution
Holyoke Medical Center first deployed Kontakt.io’s Staff Safety solution in the Emergency Department where they were seeing the most incidents and subsequently would see the most ROI for a safety solution. Giving each caregiver a wearable duress badge with a panic button that sends a real-time location already to security delivered immediate results: nurses and staff felt safer and the rapid response from security can de-escalate situations where every second counts.
Following the 2023 deployment in the ED, Holyoke Medical Center has scaled Staff Safety to three additional departments and the ED overflow unit, and has also rolled out Kontakt.io’s Patient Elopement solution in the ED. Having successfully implemented Staff Safety in other departments, leadership is now considering expanding to other use cases including patient elopement prevention in the behavioral health department as well as Asset Management. Now that the Kontakt.io RTLS and BLE infrastructure is installed, adding additional use cases is quick and easy.
In fact, scalability was one of the value-added benefits Holyoke Medical Center was looking for in a Staff Safety solution. And Kontakt.io’s AI-powered RTLS platform is built to help health systems keep staff safe, cut costs, and better orchestrate care operations. Whether a hospital is starting with Staff Safety and expanding into other use cases like Asset Management, or vice versa, once the Kontakt.io infrastructure is installed, adding use cases or expanding to additional departments is easy, fast, and fully integrated.
Customer Testimonials
“Kontakt.io elopement badges have allowed us the ability to ensure our high risk patients were safe. The badge alerts the staff so we can ensure the patient is safely returned to their treatment space quickly. In addition, the staff duress badges bring staff a sense of security. Having a solution that is on your person allows you to push for help discreetly and to ensure help is on the way.”
— Lynn Garreffi, Director of Emergency Services, Holyoke Medical Center
“The system allows for accurate reporting of staff and patient location, ensuring help is sent to the right area. Kontakt.io’s easy roll out ensured we could get the system into the hands of our staff quickly. Their support team has been excellent in helping us integrate the system into our network and workflows. We are exploring options to leverage this existing system into our use cases like equipment tracking.”
— Keith Pratt, Director of Information Systems, Holyoke Medical Center
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