Implementing Staff Duress Solutions on an RTLS Platform: The MU Health Center Story

Learn how the University of Missouri Health Center strategically improved patient and staff safety, streamlined staff visibility, and optimized financial allocation by implementing our Staff Protection solution on their existing RTLS platform.

Like most clinical facilities in the United States, staff at MU Health face an increasing number of violent events every year. Knowing that staff are every organization’s most valuable resource, MU Health resolved to address the gaps in their workplace violence protocol, as well as the growing concerns surrounding workplace morale with a Staff Protection solution.

The Challenge of Healthcare Workplace Violence is More Pressing Than Ever

Healthcare workplace violence is an upward-trending issue that clinical staff face on a regular basis. This rising issue is pervasive and costly in more ways than one: the financial costs are highly visible, but more importantly, the personal costs are detrimental to care environments. MU Health learned quickly that an efficient Staff Protection solution was necessary to ensure healthcare workplace safety, and to combat a growing sense of stress among staff.

The ER at MU Health was retrofitted to accommodate about 64,000 patients annually, but the emergency department averages 80,000 patients every year. The ER being severely backed up with patients built a pressure cooker in their waiting room. This intensely stressful environment magnified workplace violence, swelling to 20-30 violent events every month.

Chris Lemberger–the clinical manager of MU Health’s ER–told us, “We were facing a lot of challenges when workplace violence was happening outside of any confined location–it is very hard to get from one area to another and try to understand where these events are happening.”

In our webinar with the University of Missouri, a member of the integration team shared the existing duress protocol in place at the health center, “in our Psychiatric Center the process was staff would yell, and if they were heard, then they would kick off a manual process of overhead paging so that security could come to that department, then potentially escalate via phone if needed.” MU Health saw that this manual process interfered with security response time and communication–common barriers to protecting healthcare workers. The integration team searched for a more efficient staff duress system that would allow for immediate security response, location accuracy, and would bridge communication gaps to help efficiently protect healthcare staff.

MU Health is Enhancing Staff Protection with Staff Badges & RTLS

MU Health was in need of an innovative and versatile staff protection solution that would enable staff to call for help from anywhere in the hospital. Staff duress badges are portable panic buttons that allow staff members to wear their security buttons as a part of their uniform. MU Health saw the value in this Staff Protection solution and implemented it immediately.

Although the issue of staff protection was the driving factor for action in this instance, this was only the first step in discovering the value of MU’s RTLS platform. When making this decision, the team “wanted to make sure that we were leveraging our current Enterprise systems. Each new system brings additional infrastructure and support costs. Our goal was to leverage the existing RTLS system and explore additional capabilities.” MU Health is now using that same RTLS platform for Staff Protection, Asset Management, Temperature and Environmental Monitoring, and Infant Protection.

Staff Protection is Helping Improve Staff Safety in MU Health’s ER

MU Health gave us some insight into the changes that they saw in violent events with the integration of staff duress badges. The integration team at MU Health set up a Test Station that allows staff to confirm their staff badge and the Staff Protection solution is working before starting a shift. MU Health’s Lead Enterprise Architect told us, “This was a huge gratifier for staff, making sure that as they walked in, they could go up to the station and make sure that their badge was working, so they knew that they had support and backup if needed.”

MU Health’s adoption of our Staff Protection solution was aimed to not just improve efficiency and organization, but to create an environment of safety and success while protecting their healthcare workers. “There's something to be said about knowing I am not alone, I am not isolated–that I can simply hit a button and know that help is on the way. Securitas Healthcare checked those boxes for us.”