Healthy You: United Regional introduces new “smart rooms”

If you’ve ever been admitted to United Regional, then you’re probably used to the old rooms. There’s nothing wrong with them, but Vice President and Chief Information Officer Stephanie McDonell thought they could be even better, and that’s where smart rooms came in.

“A smart room connects to the technology in the room directly. Previously, in hospital rooms. All the information was in the computers. And so if somebody needed to find out information, they would have to interact with the computers. Smart room makes it visible for everyone to be able to see real time,” McDonell said.

One of the tools that comes with a smart room is the digital room display, allowing easier collaboration within your care team.

“When you think about the care around a patient, there’s so many people that touch the patient. It could be the nurse, the doctor, the physical therapist, all of those different people. This gives them a real-time view into what’s happening with the patient. As soon as they walk in the room, they immediately can see it. Coordination becomes a higher level of coordination,” McDonell said.

“It makes it a lot easier because we’re not having to fumble through papers or having to rummage through the computer systems, trying to look through things just to make sure that we can find the accurate information, especially in those high stress times,” Jemison said.

Clinical Nurse Manager, Kebrenna Jemison said not only do the smart rooms allow easier access to your medical chart, but there’s also a new digital whiteboard that provides peace of mind for the patients.

“One thing is that it’s clean and it’s uniform too. And it’s also the most up-to-date and current information. So not only is it beneficial for us as a staff, but also to the families, because that’s important. You want to know who’s taking care of your family members,” Jemison said.

And this new upgrade comes with another cool feature, especially if you don’t speak English.

“I think that it is amazing that with these smart rooms, we are able to, not only keep our patients in the loops, but also to their families also with this technology. We also have the capability of being able to have it translated into their own languages so that those patients who, where English is not their first language, they also can feel that they are being taken care of just as much as our English-speaking patients,” Jemison said.

Making top-notch medical care accessible for the entire community and beyond.

See the video report on Texomashomepage.com