Healthcare, Laboratory and Treatment Center

Community Health Center of Central Missouri

Growing Missouri Health Care Complex Invests in Enhanced Monitoring and Compliance Solution

Facility Manager Turns to Sonicu to Unify Disparate Monitoring to Improve Vaccine Monitoring Compliance Performance

It wasn’t the disparate systems with different pieces, parts, and instructions for monitoring vaccines at several locations that were the biggest challenge for Dave Williford.

It wasn’t even the overnight, out-of-the-way trips to check on the status of refrigerators and freezers in a remote clinic after a tornado or thunderstorm caused power outages nearby that vexed the healthcare facility manager. 

The Community Health Center of Central Missouri team, fortunately, scraped by without losing any vaccines to a temperature excursion…..that time. 

It was the hours upon hours his team was spending collecting, organizing and submitting compliance data around temperate monitoring for the vaccines stored at four locations across central Missouri that finally prompted Williford and his team to invest in a better way to manage their vaccine compliance program: 

A remote, wireless, cloud-based temperature monitoring solution. 

“When we put the numbers in front of our leadership and showed them how much time we were going to save with a remote system and automated monitoring versus the time we used to spend managing the system, it was a no brainer and we pulled the trigger right away,” Williford said about his process to onboard the Sonicu monitoring system. 

Yet meeting the unique and rigorous requirements of Missouri vaccine regulators meant another investment. 

This time for Sonicu. 

“The state has a very specific format; they wanted our reporting data that was taking us a lot of time to meet, and it was not something Sonicu did out of the box,” Williford explained. 

“We shared that information with Sonicu, and the team built a special report to meet those requirements. 

“Now the state people come by and say, ‘This is the best system we’ve seen anyone using’,” he said. “And we’re spending far less time than we did in the past to stay organized around compliance. It’s been a serious win for our team.” 

Sophisticated enough for enterprise hospitals, but simple enough for individual clinics

A Growing Challenge Prompted Uniformity

The first problem Williford identified with their legacy monitoring and compliance system was a lack of uniformity in how they were managing both alarms and compliance. 

The main hospital and each of the clinics had different systems, each with unique challenges and threats. 

“It was frustrating for our team as we tried some connected devices, but they weren’t staying connected as we hoped, and other devices weren’t connected so then we had to pull the data together, which was a significant burden,” he explained. 

“The lack of a standard system across our sites was causing us to spend far too much time keeping it all straight.”

Sonicu sees the problem nearly every day from health systems of all sizes. 

“It’s common for healthcare systems to have implemented very different systems with varying levels of local and remote access that make it difficult for a facility leader to achieve the sort of full visibility that drives better asset protection,” said Joe Mundell, Chief Revenue Officer, Sonicu. 

“And when you combine that with the challenges of aggregating data from these systems for state auditors, facility leaders quickly realize they can create significant efficiencies that improve operations across many departments.” 

Sonicu also has an affordable, wireless communication hub that can wirelessly transmit the monitoring data to virtually any BMS/BAS system, or pull data from a legacy system onto the SoniCloud monitoring platform.

Power and Network Outages: Engineering with Powerful Redundancy 

Making late-night runs to check on the status of a refrigerator at peril due to a powerful thunderstorm is not how any facility manager wants to spend their time. 

“We had to make a mad dash to another healthcare facility across town after a big storm,” Williford said. “There's been multiple times where we have to get up in the middle of the night and check on the status of our devices.” 

“Sometimes, there was an internet outage, but power was still up. And sometimes the power was out, but the internet was still working, so you never really knew unless you drove out there to check. We really did not suffer a loss, but we knew it was a matter of time based on our experiences.” 

Today, with the redundant Sonicu systems in place, Williford and his team are confident they will be alerted to a power outage, a network disruption, or both. The SoniCloud mobile app is configured to help users understand the exact situation of their monitoring equipment at any given time. 

That means a unique alert for a power outage, a separate alert for a network outage, and still a separate alert for a temperature excursion, allowing facility leaders like Williford to understand immediately and from anywhere the exact nature of their specific challenge. 

And they’re confident the monitoring system will continue to log data regardless of external conditions. 

Sonicu engineers its products to withstand the two biggest threats to reliable data collection: the loss of power and network connectivity. 

The SoniShield Duo communicating meter is equipped with onboard batteries and memory that ensure the collection of data regardless of power and network connectivity.

Additionally, the SoniCloud monitoring platform boasts a feature that shows where power and/or connectivity was interrupted and when it was re-established, allowing facility managers and compliance professionals to know with certainty the quality of the data collection. 

“The SoniCloud system is built on years of feedback from customers like Williford, who’ve shared with us how important it is to have reliable data for compliance auditors,” Joe Mundell, Chief Revenue Officer, said. 

“It’s obviously helpful to know when the power outage occurred, but even more important to see when it was re-connected and to have that continuity of monitoring data to ensure there was not a temperature excursion during that period. It’s that extra layer of visibility that drives compliance readiness and diligence.”

Our commitment to healthcare professionals: Simplicity, affordability and enduring customer service

Maintaining NIST certification: SNAP calibration program

One of the most important elements of maintaining compliance for the Vaccine for Children program is ensuring that the temperature probes used to monitor temperature are NIST certified.

The majority of Sonicu customers, including Community Health Center of Central Missouri, enroll in the SNAP calibration program, which automates shipping new calibrated probes to each customer, and updates their unique SoniCloud instance with the exact date and time that each probe was replaced. 

“Automatically sending new probes to us as they expire is another benefit as it’s one less item our team has to track and manage, " Williford said. “Once you're in the program, and you’ve got your calibration certificates available online, you can relax knowing the sensors are always in compliance.”

Mundell echoed the sentiment. 

“We know how busy all of our customers are running complex and demanding operations, and how many compliance checklists they’re managing,” Mundell said. “So we’ve built a system that removes this NIST calibration burden for them.

“Our customers love it because there’s no need for anyone to visit their location and spend time checking each sensor with a staff member in tow. They just get the new sensors, plug them into the Duo communicating meter and the calibration is automatically updated to the cloud for instant visibility.”

Mobile app connectivity: Installation Simplicity & Anywhere Access 

Wiliford said installation and deployment required very little IT involvement, and their team explained it as plug and play. 

They leveraged the SoniCloud mobile app installation wizard to pair each sensor and then configured the groups and alerts on the web-based backend. 

“It's been programmed and ready to go. We do some pairing, it was truly one-button push simple ” he explained. “And they've been really reliable.”

Today, most staff members monitor their vaccines from their PC with the web-based dashboard, and some staff also use the free mobile app to keep an eye on their vaccines during nights and weekends.

The program has proved so successful for vaccine monitoring that it was extended to several of the clinic's laboratories as well, Williford explained. 

“The dashboard view, seeing all our monitoring in one place, has been very helpful for us. We finally have that consolidated view of our vaccine monitoring and a better sense that we’re on top of our compliance requirements,” he said. 

And the days of downloading data onto USBs and compiling disparate reporting charts are history. 

“We don't want to burn money. It ended up being a tremendous value when you consider how many hours we saved,” Williford said. “And that’s what it really came down to for our leadership, helping us save time and money.” 

2. COMPLIANCE AUTOMATION: ALWAYS READY

Whether it’s an FDA, CDC or Joint Commission inspection or CMS auditor, the Sonicu platform will deliver ready-made reports that help you eliminate your tedious reporting process.

This transformative process improvement also reduces the opportunity for human mishap to damage your inspection or audit.

You can relax with improved peace of mind knowing that virtually any auditor and inspector will be greeted with a simple and accurate report that demonstrates your sensitive assets and environments are being monitored and you have a plan to react if your team experiences an excursion.

3. ASSET MONITORING: CONNECT, DETECT AND PROTECT

It’s more than just knowing your sensitive environments are monitored.

It has smart alarms that ensure your entire team is notified via text, email, and even phone calls when a potentially dangerous excursion occurs.

And it’s about powerful redundancy that protects against power and network outages.

Sonicu has invested in research and development to innovate a solution with a singular focus: your peace of mind.

We’ve architected our solution around easy installation, an intuitive user experience, and a rapid and enduring return on investment.

That’s why public and private organizations grow with us.

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