Saturday, September 28, 2013

Tucson Medical Center Is the Most Wired or Most Stupid Hospital?


Most Wired

Subject: Question Re Your Award

Dear HealthCare's Most Wired,
I recently read that Tucson Medical Center, in Tucson, Arizona is an award winning Most Wired Hospital.  Does this award go to the mostwired or wireless hospital?  Patients at the Tuscon Medical Center report that the hospital IT network is operating wirelessly.
Thank you,
Debbie Rubin
 

From: Libby Kelley 

Subject: A Tucson Arizona Hospital that irradiates newborn babies!

Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2013 16:05:35 -0700

The article below about Tucson Medical Center, in Tucson, Arizona, proudly announcing they are an award winning wireless hospital brings me to relate a story I just heard from a credible source about a woman who gave recently birth to a baby at that hospital. I have been following the reports on TMC as they are the first wireless hospital in the state to install a wireless campus. I had a bad experience there myself about a years ago, due to over-exposure to WiFi.  See this report below from a new mother, edited to remove any identifying information for privacy reasons: 

It appears that TMC is irradiating all of the new born babies with a wide variety of wireless radiation devices.  They were inducing headaches into me and the baby was restless there.  We came home and the baby is doing much better there.  There was a wireless router right above the baby's crib and they have some sort of other Cisco wireless networking equipment outside of the door.
 
They may be in violation of co-location issues with their devices in some areas of the hospital and minimum separation issues regarding tall people.  All of their wireless routers appear to be mounted to the ceiling tiles.  In some corridors, you can see many wireless devices poking through the ceiling.  Unfortunately, the maternity ward appears to be amongst the worst parts of the hospital for wireless power density.  I was picking up hotspots of 6.6 mW/cm2 as I walked around the maternity ward.  They are also using RFID for security door control to the maternity ward.  The syringe pumps have operating wi-fi signals in them and these pumps are kept next to the mothers.
 
I want TMC to know about this, but need your help as we do not want to be the ones to bring it up. An article about TMC is below.
 
Libby Kelley
  
 
TMC named one of “Most Wired” hospitals for the second year running.


Tucson Medical Center has been recognized for the second year in a row as  a “Most Wired” hospital, leading the way in information technology across the nation.

As one of only two Arizona hospitals to secure the honor, TMC is the only one in Southern Arizona to make the Most Wired list, which recognizes those hospitals that comprehensively use technologies to improve care for patients, to streamline data collection and to boost efficiencies.

The hospitals were culled from 1,713 hospitals represented in surveys by Hospitals & Health Networks, a publication of the American Hospital Association.

“TMC for years has been focused on finding ways to leverage technology to improve patient care,” said TMC’s Chief Information Officer Frank Marini. “I was very pleased that the organization has been recognized for the hard work and the investment it has taken to get to this point.”

“It is not an easy designation to reach, so I think it says something about the progressive culture we have here at TMC,” Marini continued.

With the rapidly changing pace of healthcare today,  technology will absolutely provide a strong foundation to keep abreast of these changes, as well as play a crucial role in the improvement of patient care while intelligently managing resources.

“We all know that being “Most Wired” is not the end goal, but the conduit to providing better patient care, improving patient outcomes and leveraging data to make a positive impact on the health of the people in our community,” stated Susan Snedaker,  Director of Information Systems for TMC. “ For these reasons, we are proud to be among the “Most Wired”.”

No comments:

Post a Comment