Aurora hospital's automated capacity system helped bring order after tragedy
An Healthcare Informatics article explores how using the system information helped coordinate patient movement and other efforts around the hospital
By Healthcare Facilities Today
In July, 2012, the University of Colorado Hospital (UCH) in Aurora, was thrown into a potentially chaotic situation by a shooting at a midnight screening of “The Dark Knight Rises” that killed 12 people and injured 58 others. Paige Patterson, a UCH Aurora hospital manager and capacity software liaison, tracked patient movement information with an automated capacity software system that allowed the clinicians to focus on saving people’s lives. In an article on the Healthcare Informatics website, Patterson said UCH Aurora interfaced a capacity system with the hospital’s enterprise-wide electronic medical record system. This allowed her to track the patients' locations throughout their stay along with vital demographics, physician and length-of-stay information and their diagnosis.
Their safety measures included training staff in de-escalation, active-shooter response drills and equipping 6,000 employees with duress notification badges.