The world is literally at a standstill right now with the majority of countries being on lock down due to the corona virus, known as COVID-19. This virus has become one of the most devastating blows for the world and being so infectious, it makes it harder for health care workers and senior care home assistants to manage their residents and patients, ensuring that the virus isn't spreading, slowing down the rate of transmission.

COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic by WHO in March 2020, having a serious impact on everyone. Those at higher risk of those in elderly homes, outpatient medical facilities, emergency departments, nursing facilities, long term care homes and senior assisted living centers, to name a few. This includes residents, patients and staff.

Washington in the United States saw more than twenty deaths in one senior living home. This could have been avoided if they were using the right technology and contagion mapping to track residents, visitors and staff. They would have been able to be proactive in their containment. It's a fact that recent statistics have shown that the mortality rate is fifteen percent in those older than eighty, making them high risk, along with those with heart disease, diabetes, lung disease and kidney disease.

The CDC (Centers for Disease Control) published guidelines focusing on long term care facilities, suggesting that they monitor residents, restricting those with respiratory problems or fever. They will need a dedicated care team for any COVID-19 patients with adequate training on infection prevention. As part of the care guidelines, employees must clean their hands based on the CDC guidelines, before and after contact with anyone who may have the virus, this includes any contaminate equipment, surfaces and more.

Anyone who is not well is to stay home. Not everyone has symptoms, which can make it rather difficult to know whether one has been exposed to the COVID-19 virus. Using RFID technology, the containment of patients and residents within health care centers can be done with ease and confidence.

It's important to document all encounters between staff and patients, providing valuable insight about the contagion. Patients without symptoms, residents and staff who become symptomatic can be traced quickly, including identifying all contacts to slow the spread and ensure all possible contacts are self-isolated. This along with the cleaning that is ongoing, the virus can be identified and maintained quickly, reducing further risk of patients, residents and staff.

Once the center has the contagion identified, they can move on to containment and mitigation. It is important containment zones are identified and created, ensuring any infected patients don't get into contact with visitors and other patients or residents. This will help reduce the spread of the virus. With the right monitoring technology in place, workers can reduce risk when dealing with non-compliant patients by setting up zones with effective tracing solutions to identify when the non-compliant patients moves, so they can be dealt with swiftly.

Ensure when selecting a monitoring system to help you manage the contagion within your senior assisted living or long-term living facility that you find one that you feel works best to meet your needs. It's important to do your research and learn about the various systems available on the market, so you can hand select the ones that are going to provide the best long-term results.

RFID, radio frequency identification, has been used in a wide number of industries around the world for years. RFID can be used to effectively track and manage vehicles, inventory, equipment, staff and more. This form of identification has proven highly effective in the healthcare industry in both doctors' rooms, clinics, and hospitals, helping to ensure patient satisfaction and top-quality care moving forward. 

The first way to ensure the deployment of your RFID system in the healthcare industry goes according to the plan is to identify the current processes and ensure that they are working properly. Through the effective identification of current processes, you can focus on areas that require work and what data you need to collect on the RFID tag, ensuring you have the actionable data at your fingertips as and when you need it.

Next, you need to choose your supplier. The supplier you choose should be chosen with great care, reviewing and comparing to find the perfect match that is going to meet your particular needs moving forward. The company you choose should develop their RFID systems which rely on the cloud to provide you with excellent security and easy access. 

Always ensure you learn as much as you can about the suppliers before making any final decisions. This means taking to reviews sites and forums to find the right match, based on past and present client reviews. You can then compare the suppliers to narrow down your shortlist to help you make your selection with confidence. 

Identify what training is required. Of course, the benefit of RFID is that it saves your team time, it boosts productivity and therefore training should be minimal. Ideally, there should only be captured when information is updated. Having all details regularly updated to the RFID tag ensures that when you access the system you receive real-time data you can trust. 

Training should be minimal to ensure you don't lose your valuable resources for too long. RFID tracking should be quick and easy to incorporate into your existing processes. This brings us to the next step in deploying RFID in healthcare. This is the integration of the system into your existing processes. This is why it's so important you have an excellent understanding of your processes for each patient, which can then be merged with the system to ensure you receive actionable data in real-time. 

Execute the system starting in one department and then moving it into the next department. You don't want to hit your entire hospital, clinic or surgery in one go. Rather focus on various areas, introducing the system and ensuring their comfort, being executing into the next. This way by the time you have the entire hospital or clinic on RFID, everyone will have a good grasp of how it works and any kinks will be sorted to ensure a streamless process. 

Enjoy the great benefits that RFID can provide for the healthcare industry from helping you locate important equipment in real-time to managing staff and ensuring patient satisfaction. RFID can also be used to manage medication effectively to ensure the best inpatient care in hospitals, clinics and doctor surgeries. 

Ensure you pay close attention to the supplier of the RFID system for your healthcare business to ensure you receive the high-quality system you need to achieve success at a price you can afford.