Rural Hospital Embraces Innovation Upgrades Rooms with CyberMed S24

Despite its small size and remote location, South Peninsula Hospital (SPH) has always prided itself on providing state of the art care for their patients. One area that the team felt could use an upgrade was their patient charting and medicine dispensing workflows. 

For patient charting, their old workflow saw a central workstation for every two rooms. Nurses would interact with patients and then would have to step out of the room to do their charting. The standard of care that SPH was striving to provide would require as close to real-time charting as possible. 

On the medication dispensing side of things, the team at SPH was using medication dispensing carts to go room to room, scan medications, and then dispense them. Unfortunately, the hospital only had four such carts, which meant dispensing medications on schedule and adhering to the proper workflow - scanning wristbands, gathering patient data, and scanning medications bedside - was a considerable challenge. There simply weren’t enough carts to service all of the patient beds in a timely fashion. The team knew there had to be a cost-effective way to improve both workflows and immediately set out in search of a solution.  

The team at South Peninsula decided that the best way to tackle both issues was to mount a computer in every single patient room. This quickly presented the team with a checklist of must haves for these computers. 

For starters, the computers would need to be medical grade and 60601-1 certified for near patient use. They would need to be fanless to prevent the spread of germs, and also needed to be disinfectable. The units would also be mounted on a wall arm, so they need to be VESA compatible as well. The nurses also requested that the wall mount be able to telescope 3 feet off of the wall and be height adjustable for each nurse. The screen would need to be large enough to properly render their EMR software as well. Lastly, and probably most importantly, they would need a way to integrate a barcode scanner into the solution in order to facilitate bedside medication dispensing. 

After meeting Cybernet at the 2018 HIMSS conference, SPH decided to evaluate the CyberMed S24 medical panel PC, as well as a few other models from various manufacturers. Not only did the S24 check off every box on their requirements list but Cybernet was also able to procure Falcon arm mounts that met all of the needs as well. The crowning feature of the S24 was the cable management cover that came equipped with an integrated 2D barcode scanner. With the 24” HD display, medical grade certifications, and integrated barcode scanner, the CyberMed S24 was the perfect device. 

The team at South Peninsula immediately took to the new computers. Newer nurses were excited to be able to provide care right at the bedside and veteran nurses were quick to adapt to the new workflow. While it wasn’t even something the nursing staff had initially even considered, having an medical computer that could be disinfected has also provided the staff with an extra degree of peace of mind given the current climate of COVID-19.

Medication is also being distributed safely and on time to all of their patients thanks to the integrated barcode scanner on the units. The large display has worked brilliantly with their EMR software and the nursing staff reports an extremely high level of satisfaction with the updated workflow. Best of all, there hasn’t been a single hardware issue that the nursing staff and IT staff have reported back to Cybernet. A minor issue with connectivity was an issue at first, but a simple fix of installing some WiFi extenders in the facility quickly alleviated that issue. 

All in all, the team couldn’t be happier with their new CyberMed S24s and is looking forward to continuing to offer the absolute highest standard of care to the citizens of Homer and the surrounding areas.