Smart Rooms at OhioHealth Pickerington Methodist Hospital Lead the Way for Future Expansion
OhioHealth Pickerington Methodist Hospital, which opened in December 2023, is setting a new standard in healthcare with its 84 smart rooms. These rooms, including 72 medical-surgical and 12 labor and delivery units, feature technology designed to enhance patient care and streamline hospital operations.
This innovative approach is part of OhioHealth’s long-term strategy to integrate this technology across its facilities.
"Pickerington was scalable with it being a new hospital," Duane Perry, BSN, RN, Pickerington Methodist Hospital chief nursing officer, told Becker’s Hospital Review. "We were able to get it implemented at a lower cost, but it allows us to test workflows, completely understand how to utilize it and how to optimize it, before we lateralize it. But it is our goal moving forward to put it in more care sites."
OhioHealth partnered with smart room company eVideon and virtual care startup Caregility to implement these features such as digital door signs that indicate patient status with color-coded lights, such as yellow for fall risk, to alert staff in real time. Each room is equipped with smart TVs and tablets that allow patients to access educational materials about their care, stream their favorite shows and connect with family members via video calls. Patients can also use the room’s technology to place food orders and access translation services.
Staff members wear radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags that trigger personalized introductions on the room’s smart TV whenever they enter. This helps patients and family members identify the staff and understand their roles in the care process.
The technology is not only improving patient care, but staff satisfaction as well. With OhioHealth’s virtual nursing program, remote nurses saved over 650 hours of bedside care and documented 12,000 nursing notes in just six months.
"They're able to do care coordination," said Arika Thomas, BSN, RN, director of nursing for inpatient services at Pickerington Methodist. "They attend our multidisciplinary rounds, so they're an active, key partner in our discharge planning for the patient during the day. They're connecting with the nurses throughout the day. We have a tool within our electronic medical record that helps identify if a patient needs a higher level of care or assistance. The virtual nurse can review that, go over it with the nurse and help escalate that."
The hospital also plans to roll out 24/7 virtual monitoring where virtual sitters can observe high-risk patients through in-room cameras, and if they notice signs of distress, can intervene by alerting the patient or the on-site staff.
OhioHealth aims to expand these smart room capabilities to more care sites, drawing on Pickerington’s success to improve care across its network.
"Our experience has been very positive," Perry said. "What's nice about this technology and us implementing it is it doesn't just cover one thing. It's patient experience. It's a staff satisfier."
To learn more about OhioHealth Pickerington Methodist Hospital, click here.
