Patent ID: 8162922

Claim:
Method of tracking indwelling catheter use in hospital patients, in which a plurality of scannable coded patient bracelets are placed upon respective ones of said hospital patients, and a plurality of catheters each having a catheter-unique identification (CUI) tag, each said bracelet having a unique patient identification code, and each said catheter CUI tag having a unique catheter identification code, wherein a computerized hospital information system contains patient demographic information including identity of each patient and room location of each patient and a designated health care practitioner responsible for inserting the catheter into the patient or patients possesses a coded device containing a scannable identification code, the method comprising: scanning the patient bracelet for one of said patients on a portable scanner appliance; selecting one of said catheters for insertion in the patient; scanning the CUI tag of the selected one of the catheters with the scanner appliance to commence a catheterization sequence in which the scanner appliance electronically associates the selected one of the catheters with said patient; scanning the designated health care practitioner coded device at the time of scanning the patient bracelet and the CUI tag of the catheter device inserted into the patient; after the scanning the CUI tag thereof, the designated health care practitioner inserting said catheter device in the patient; the scanner appliance synchronizing to said hospital information system the catheterization data to include identity location of each such patient, identity of the designated health care practitioner inserting the catheter, and date/time stamp of the insertion of each said catheter in said patients; and the scanner appliance applying a rules protocol to generate a target removal time for said catheter device and to display said target removal time along with identity of the patient to the designated health care practitioner.