University of Vermont Medical Center
The University of Vermont Medical Center is a tertiary care regional referral center providing advanced care to approximately 1 million residents in Vermont and northern New York. Together with their partners at the University of Vermont College of Medicine and the College of Nursing and Health Sciences, they are Vermont’s academic medical center.
Patient satisfaction is paramount to the center’s mission. Providing an acoustically comfortable environment for patients isn’t just good customer service – it also benefits a hospital’s bottom line. HIPAA mandates that healthcare providers take precautions to ensure confidential medical information is protected, and this includes conversations between caregivers and patients.
Additionally, the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems Survey (HCAHPS) provides scores to hospitals based on a variety of criteria, including “quietness of patient environment.” Hospitals with low HCAHPS scores risk loss of government funding and damaged reputations. The center needed to implement a solution that both safeguarded private patient information while also aiding in the healing process.
Solution
At a healthcare tradeshow, Wes Pooler, director of Facilities Management at UVM Medical Center and Tim Hooper, co-owner of technology integrator Connectivity Point, discussed the value of adding a sound masking system to UVM Medical Center’s inpatient facilities to make them more acoustically comfortable. Sound masking is the process of adding a low level, unobtrusive background sound to an environment to cover up excess speech noise, making the affected environment more comfortable, private, and free of excess noise distractions.
The University of Vermont Medical Center installed Biamp’s cost-effective Cambridge Qt Pro Sound Masking System line in an inpatient wing of the hospital. Small, barely visible Qt® Emitters (speakers) were installed in the ceiling tiles throughout the entire space including nurse stations, patient rooms, and corridors. The emitters were connected via cables to a control module in one of the hospital’s server rooms. Biamp staff provided additional commissioning support to ensure the system was running optimally.
We installed [QtPro] in an inpatient area, along with other noise-reducing measures. We’ve experienced positive results from the measures taken.
TIM POOLERCo-Owner
Connectivity Point
Conclusion
The hospital has seen a marked increase in the number of patients reporting that their rooms were always quiet at night in their HCAHPS surveys. As an added bonus, QtPro is the most energy efficient sound masking system available, allowing UVM Medical Center to adhere to its commitment to sustainability. “We installed [QtPro] in an inpatient area, along with other noise-reducing measures,” says Pooler. “We’ve experienced positive results from the measures taken.” UVM Medical Center is installing the system in all of its patient wings.