Offering more than 75 specialty programs, St. Joseph’s Hospital is a magnet hospital for nursing excellence. In keeping with the hospital’s emphasis on outstanding nursing, when they recently opened a new procedure area, they sought a first-rate, state-of-the-art system for summoning nursing help and ensuring that nurse calls are seen, responded to, and tracked. They also needed doctors, nurses, and staff to know the status of exam rooms, such as when patients were waiting in a specific room and when the doctor arrived.
To address these needs, the hospital asked Orange County systems contractors RA Cline Systems to specify and install an easy-to-use, reliable call system. Cline’s solution: a combination of Tech Works’ highly respected CC-Series Clinic Room Status and newly updated NC-Series Nurse Call systems.
“I used NC-Series and CC-Series to create systems for the operation and exam rooms,” recalls RA Cline principal Bob Cline. “Now the hospital has a four-status Clinic Room Status system and a Nurse Call system that has a Staff button, an Emergency Help button, and a patient call cord. The latest version of NC-Series also met a design requirement by the architect to provide that a call indication anywhere on the system is broadcast into each of the exam rooms and throughout the system.”
CC-Series Clinic Room Status is a networked room status/emergency call system that enables anyone on the system to instantly see whether, for example, a room is available, a doctor is in attendance, or there is an emergency and help is required. NC-Series Nurse Call enables doctors, staff, and even patients to summon staff, call for emergency nursing help, or cancel a nurse call from inside any exam room. The two tone- and light-based systems combined to do everything St. Joseph’s Hospital wanted and more.
“The new version of NC-Series Nurse Call can work over existing copper wiring or over a CAT5 Ethernet cable,” notes Cline. “Since this was a new space, we were able to go with CAT5 cable. But one of the great things about NC-Series and CC-Series is that they are easy to install whether you use copper wire or CAT5. In fact, many times I supply a package of Tech Works gear and a design drawing, and with minimal information from me, an electrician can install it. I just have to go out and certify that everything is installed and operating properly.”
While installation was simple, the main challenge Cline faced at St. Joseph’s was of a different nature. “We had to meet the design specification that every exam room had to have a call indicator of any event that occurred on the system,” Cline explains. “With previous systems, you would normally only get nurse calls at a central location, such as a nurse’s station. If everyone was away from that location, the call might not be seen right away. Yet if nurses are in Exam Room 1, they need to know immediately if there is a subsequent call in another exam room. The challenge was to produce duty stations that would create a call tone in each of the exam rooms so the staff would be aware of a call somewhere else on the system. The new version of NC-Series makes that possible.”
NC-Series offers additional advanced features, including a computer graphical interface for accessing larger systems. The St. Joseph Hospital system only had to serve eight exam rooms and four stations at hyperbaric chambers, so the advanced computer features were not required. But Nurse Call is modular and expandable, so if St. Joseph’s further expands their facility, Cline can easily accommodate their growing needs.
“The Tech Works systems cover all of St. Joseph’s needs at a high level,” Cline points out. “The equipment looks and feels the same for NC-Series and CC-Series, so it all blends in the rooms. It’s an affordable system, too. Most important, NC-Series and CC-Series are entirely reliable and very easy to use—which means they will actually be used.”