A wireless communication system that was integrated with a hospital’s nurse call system reduced the time it took caregivers to respond to patient requests, a new study found.

The application transmits bedside calls from patients using a hospital’s nurse call system to the wireless badges from Vocera that nurses wear. Baltimore's St. Agnes Hospital, a 300-bed facility, integrated its wireless communications system from Vocera with the hospital’s nurse call system.

Researchers from the University of Maryland’s Center for Health Information and Decision Systems between June 28, 2005 and August 19, 2005 studied communications between caregivers and patients using the Vocera and nurse call systems. Use of the integrated systems reduced overall mean time for completing a patient request by 51 percent, researchers found. Since integrating the system, noise levels in the units where the system is used also has decreased, Kathi Diver, RN and nurse manger for St. Agnes.

On units without the integrated system, it took 127 seconds for nurses to respond to patient requests, compared with 62 seconds for units with the integrated system, according to William Greskovich, vice president of operations and chief information officer for St. Agnes. Greskovich estimates that the system helped save 1,500 hours of nurse time.

“It reduced the wasteful time and put care hours back into their routine,” Greskovich said of the system.

Researchers did find that in some cases, there was resistance to adoption of the system for external communications. “In most instances, the clinicians used traditional means of communicating such as land-line telephones and cellular phones when a call was made to an external person. Our informal interviews hinted at the belief that in many cases the users did not want to use the badge because their external calls were personal in nature,” the researchers wrote.

St. Agnes has deployed the Vocera system in stages at the hospital since May, 2003. Last year, St. Agnes became the first hospital to integrate the wireless call system with a hospital nursing call system. More than 1,000 hospital employees now use the system. A spokesperson for Vocera estimated that hospitals with a similar number of users would spend about $600,000, including software, hardware and support costs, for such a system.

St. Agnes is now in the process of rolling out the integrated system to all units. CIO William Greskovich says the hospital will then look at how the system can help change processes, such as the ordering of supplies.