RTLS in Mental Health and Behavioral Health Facilities: A Deep Dive
Chapter One: The Increased Need for Real-Time Locating Systems in Mental Health Facilities
Chapter Two: Reliable, Accurate Real-Time Locating Systems Customized for Mental Health Facilities
Chapter Three: Real-Time Locating Systems for Mental Health Facility Staff and Resident Safety
Chapter Four: Real-Time Locating Systems for Mental Health Facility Resident Empowerment
Chapter Five: Using Real-Time Locating Systems to Enhance Efficiency in Mental Health Facilities
Chapter One: The Increased Need for Real-Time Locating Systems in Mental Health Facilities
The Affordable Care Act’s restructuring of mental and behavioral health services has prompted an explosion in the number of Americans who are eligible for inpatient and outpatient mental health coverage. In addition, as our criminal justice system begins to transform from one of purely punitive means to one with a rehabilitative focus, we see more and more custody-based mental health facilities opening their doors.
Now, more than ever, individuals have choices when seeking treatment for things such as substance misuse, trauma and mental health disorders. Also, due to shifts in our thinking about behavioral rehabilitation, there is a stronger focus than ever on the need to provide custody-based mental health facilities for treating individuals convicted of crimes or struggling through severe mental health challenges.
But just as there’s no one-size-fits-all treatment plan for individuals seeking mental health treatment, there’s no out-of-the-box real-time locating system (RTLS) that will meet all the needs of these complex physical environments. We’ll explore that in more detail below.
Chapter Two: Reliable, Accurate Real-Time Locating Systems Customized for Mental Health Facilities
Today’s mental health facilities—with their inpatient and outpatient capabilities, their wide range of services, their huge variety of people served and their numerous approaches to treatment—require faster, reliable, accurate RTLS. Why? Because with the right RTLS, care providers can focus on meeting the needs of residents and patients without spending an outsized amount of time tracking down people or equipment. The right RTLS helps to ensure safety for staff and residents and offers peace of mind in operations.
But not all RTLS are created equal. Many systems don’t account for the specific needs inherent to what we call “complex physical environments.” For example, residential or inpatient treatment facilities host individuals from all walks of life. Inside those same facilities are care providers, mental health professionals, and many other service areas such as pharmacies, kitchens, cafeterias, recreational areas and treatment rooms. The way these buildings are constructed—with their winding corridors, variety of building material, large rooms, resident rooms, multiple bathrooms, multiple stories, kitchens, basements and gathering areas—makes finding the right RTLS no small feat.
What’s more, most mental health professionals are not trained in self-defense should a safety situation arise. They are there to help residents and patients, and that is where their focus should be.
And that is where the right RTLS comes in. At Actall, we use dual-band frequency technology, signal-strength tuning and other proprietary technologies to create custom RTLS solutions for mental health facilities. Our approach means that duress or location signals will never be impeded by thick building materials or confused by corridors. Duress signals are prioritized and boast industry-leading signal propagation times, so help gets where it’s needed, when it’s needed.
Chapter Three: Real-Time Locating Systems for Mental Health Facility Staff and Resident Safety
Our RTLS solutions for mental health facilities are customized and highly accurate. On a high level, the system includes tags that residents and patients wear; tags and duress buttons that staffers carry; locators and dual-band frequency signals.
This dual-band frequency technology—our industry-leading solution that removes the need to depend on unreliable triangulation or WiFi—is composed of signals in 2.4 GHz (the same frequency as Bluetooth or WiFi) for short-range locating signals and 900 MHz (close to the same frequency as cellphones) for long-range transmission.
Locators are stationed strategically throughout mental health facilities to maximize signal propagation, accuracy and efficiency. The density of locators is determined based on a full audit of a facility’s needs as well as complex, custom-engineered solutions based on the facility’s layout, needs, competing signals and more.
We also use both directional and omnidirectional antennas so we can “listen” to specific areas (directional antennas) and “listen” to large spaces (omnidirectional antennas), such as a recreation room.
Our subtle duress buttons are integrated in tags that staff members carry and quickly propagate signals to a defined head-end so that help quickly arrives where it’s needed.
The result of these customized and highly accurate solutions means that residents feel safe in a facility—for example, should they experience an issue, help will arrive incredibly quickly—and staffers can focus on helping individuals work through mental health challenges, heal from trauma and, in the case of custody-based mental health facilities, prepare to reintegrate into society.
Chapter Four: Real-Time Locating Systems for Mental Health Facility Resident Empowerment
Custody-based mental health facilities are excellent solutions for some individuals. But even the individuals who are best suited to reaping the rewards of a focused, intensive program at a custody-based facility may feel some frustration at the removal of certain freedoms and mobility.
Not being able to manage their own medications, meals, sleeping schedules or free time can emotionally tax residents of mental health facilities. We, as humans, value autonomy and self-determination, and being in a custody-based mental health facility doesn’t change that.
RTLS can help. Our highly accurate tracking, small-device profile and customized solutions mean staffers don’t need to be supervising residents at all times to know they’re where they’re supposed to be or that they’re engaged in activities they’re supposed to be focused on. This allows residents more freedom—the freedom to visit an in-house pharmacy, for example, and fill a prescription; the freedom to be trusted to adhere to a schedule of classes and treatment; or even the freedom to manage their own laundry, meals and medications.
This kind of freedom can empower individuals, speed their healing process and make reintegration into society a significantly less-intense shock to the system than it could otherwise be.
Chapter Five: Using Real-Time Locating Systems to Enhance Efficiency in Mental Health Facilities
While tracking equipment and other items may not be as important as helping facilitate social reintegration, staff safety or resident empowerment, the truth is this: RTLS can help facilities save a significant amount of money by efficiently tracking staff movement and equipment locations.
If staff members are crisscrossing a facility multiple times a day to visit residents and patients, they could end up exhausted and frustrated with inefficiency—which could lead to low morale. Using RTLS to track staff members as they move through facilities can help illuminate issues regarding overlap or inefficiency. For example, patient visits could be reorganized so that care providers can visit patients who are centralized in the same area of a facility back-to-back, rather than visiting patients on opposite ends of a facility back-to-back.
And there’s a well-known study showing that health care providers spend 20 minutes per shift to find necessary equipment. The study was not conducted in a healthcare setting focused on mental health, but the sentiment and behavior ring true: If something isn’t where it’s supposed to be, you’re going to spend valuable time looking for it. RTLS devices can be used to tag and track equipment such as wheelchairs, recording devices, computers and more so that care providers can focus on resident and patient health—not on finding lost items. And facility administrators won’t waste funds—already often pinched—on leasing or buying duplicate equipment.
RTLS provides opportunities for facilities of all sizes and specializations to enhance safety, treatment and efficiency. With a growing emphasis on the importance of treating the whole person—both their mental health and physical health—we anticipate that these facilities will play an even greater role in the future regarding behavioral rehabilitation, substance-misuse treatment and more.