Hospital Housekeeping Systems Deploys Custom iPad Applications for Improved Cleaning Processes

Salesforce.com, the enterprise cloud computing company, announces the success of Hospital Housekeeping Systems (HHS) in using Cloud 2 technologies to bring the power of social, mobile and open cloud computing to its business. HHS is using Force.com, a leading cloud platform-as-a-service to deliver custom applications to manage and enhance the services it delivers at 140 hospitals in the U.S. The Force.com applications automate quality assessment for management and staff using iPad and iPod touch devices, provide real-time visibility into hospital activity improving patient throughput and clinical outcomes, and ultimately impact the hospital's bottom line.

Using the Force.com platform-as-a-service, HHS has built two custom applications:

Mobile quality assessment tracking application:

- With a prototype built in just two weeks by HHS, this mobile app enables shift managers to track employee performance, patient satisfaction and log maintenance requests.

- Previously these processes were done using paper forms, making it challenging to compare which teams were performing well with those who weren't.

- Viewing real-time dashboards from Force.com on the iPad, mobile workers can show trends and relative performance by facility, team and shift to hospital leadership. HHS uses these metrics as a competitive differentiator when selling its services to new hospitals.

BedWatch a custom bed management application:

- HHS built this innovative app to track patient flow through a hospital following an exhaustive search for an existing system that didn't uncover an adequate solution.

- The bed management app automates the status of hospital rooms through integration with the hospital's admission system, pagers and a phone voice response system. For example, when a patient is discharged, the app automatically changes the status of the room to dirty, and pages the attendant on duty. When the attendant begins cleaning the room, they use any phone to call the IVR, changing the status to cleaning in progress. They call again when finished cleaning, updating the status to ready. Each department involved in the process has a real-time listing of all rooms, color-coded by status, and continually refreshed with timestamps to track how long it takes to turn over a room.

- Building and running the app in the cloud on Force.com gives HHS an advantage over competitors who offer similar applications built using traditional client/server software which can be complicated to use and inflexible to specific hospital requirements.

As the industry's largest privately-held, acute-care services provider that also delivers support-service solutions to healthcare facilities, HHS has been using Salesforce CRM successfully since 2001 for the marketing and sales of its services to hospitals.