FIGURE B


The lift team has greater visibility into how patient-handling equipment is used thanks to the lift data captured on Palm handhelds. Roll over picture for a larger image.

Considering that the hospital recently invested $60,000 in dedicated patient handling equipment, having information that identifies the most useful equipment will help guide future equipment investments at this and other Kaiser Permanente facilities.

Eventually, the lift information collected with the handhelds will be studied to see how patient handling contributes to the clinical outcomes of a patient in an effort to identify how patient care can be improved through patient handling.

Looking ahead
The lift team handheld application is so helpful that the two other Kaiser Permanente facilities in Sacramento Valley are currently deploying the solution (at the Morse Avenue and Roseville facilities). Kaiser Permanente is recommending that the solution be used by any Kaiser Permanente facility implementing a lift team in the future.

Like so many organizations that implement Palm handheld technology, Kaiser Permanente South Sacramento Medical Center's EH&S office has already found other ways handhelds can make a difference. The EH&S office plans to develop a second Palm handheld application to provide mobile data collection capabilities for on-site inspections and assessing employee knowledge.

Stephen Vance is a Contributing Editor for Computing Unplugged Magazine. His Web site is located at http://www.vance.com. He can be reached at steve@vance.com.