Spring Ahead with Synchronized Time

Accurate time is critical in healthcare facilities where life-saving decisions are made every second of every day. Efficient patient throughput, dependable lab results, timely medication disbursement, accurate medical record maintenance and Joint Commission compliance rely on precisely synchronized time from the emergency room to the patient’s room.

Daylight Saving Time can prove to be especially problematic, requiring recurring and costly manual time adjustments. Thousands of healthcare facilities nationwide are burdened with spending hours of time, changing the hands of time, twice per year during Spring and Fall Daylight Saving Time. It takes a maintenance worker from 5 to 30 minutes to reset a clock, depending on complexity. Multiply that by 100 or more clocks and it winds up costing a substantial amount of money in maintenance expenses every year. It’s a job that can’t be delayed, and resetting them by hand, and getting them all synchronized, is next to impossible.

Synchronized clock systems take time changes off the to-do list by eliminating the need for manual time changes. These intuitive timekeepers automatically adjust for Daylight Saving Time, springing ahead one hour at the start of Daylight Saving Time, and falling back one hour when Daylight Saving Time ends each year. Radio Frequency Wireless synchronized clocks receive an official time signal from a radio frequency transmitter, while PoE IP Network synchronized clocks receive time over a local (LAN) or wide (WAN) network. The result-your facility never misses a tick without ever touching a single clock.

Synchronized clocks go beyond Daylight Saving Time. Since every clock displays the same exact time over multiple departments and work stations, they provide precision in time-sensitive tasks, accurate timekeeping in patient medical records, synchronized shift changes and achievement of regulatory compliance. Synchronized clocks also promote personnel productivity and accountability. It is estimated that a synchronized clock system can save an average of $500 per employee per year on top of annual Daylight Saving maintenance labor savings (assuming they make $15 per hour). Use in conjunction with a Code Blue Digital Timer System to measure and monitor elapsed or remaining time during Code Blue events.

Read up on more timekeeping product applications for healthcare facilities here.