Patient safety management: RFID technology to improve emergency room medical care quality

44,000 to 98,000 patients die yearly, $17 to $29 billion are lost due to treatment errors in the United States. Although the accuracy of the numbers has been challenged, medical disasters caused by errors treatment are serious. Many problems arise in emergency room operation such as severely ill patients waiting too long to receive treatment, unprofessional staffs operation, improper drugs, injections, volume of anesthetics and surgeries, etc. These drawbacks threaten emergency room medical care quality and endanger patient safety. Hospitals need an innovative approach to improve the process of operations. The purpose of this paper is to apply RFID to solve emergency room operational problems. The Wan-Fang Hospital is the only hospital implementing the emergency room RFID information system in Taiwan. This paper reports on the findings of a case based research investigation. It introduces emergency room workflow, which monitors the triage patient's waiting time and the treatment process. RFID applied in emergency room workflow as a new service era to improve patient waiting time and accuracy for patient treatment to prevent human errors. ICIC International