SimplyCast: Smart Hospital
Use Case: Smart Hospital: Code Grey - Utility Loss
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ID: SHSUC012

Smart Hospital: Code Grey - Utility Loss

Code GreyCode GrayPower LossWater LossUtility Loss

The loss of utilities – electricity, water, gas, etc. – can cause many issues in a hospital. Many life-saving measures and technology require electricity; a generator can only handle so much for so long if electricity goes down. Loss of other utilities can have other damaging effects on patients, staff, and procedures.

Growth, the SimplyCast Way

SimplyCast’s Code Grey use case allows hospitals to alert staff when utilities go down. Staff can reach out to help assess issues that have arisen due to the outage. This allows administrators to track the responses and designate resources to the areas of the hospital that have a more urgent need.

  • Streamline alerts and responses into a central database for easy dissemination of resources and staff while assessing all issues
  • Send alerts to all staff or a subset of available oncall staff
  • Inform all staff of the utility loss with updates of ETA’s of when the system(s) will be back online
  • Analyze reports after the incident to find ways to improve procedures and resources

The Benefits:

  • With rapid notifications to all staff or specific on-call staff, the Code Grey is addressed quickly
  • Through the central databases' alerts and responses, resource allocation is simplified
  • Staff are informed and updated about the situation and can communicate their patients' or departments' needs
  • Enable hospitals to refine procedures and improve resource management with reports

Actions for Success

  1. Create a staff database in CRM.
  2. Create messages related to Code Brown in the SimplyCast 360.
  3. Launch Code Grey.
  4. Send alerts to staff, especially those supporting high-risk patients, to ensure the fastest response to an outage.
  5. Live survey to monitor where issues arise.
  6. Check reports to keep an eye on an effective log of messages received and sent, including when those messages were sent or received. This will make reviewing the response after an all-clear easier.

Frequently Asked Questions

A code grey emergency in a hospital can hold a variety of meanings depending on the region. For our intended purpose code grey refers to the loss of crucial utilities within the hospital. Code grey is launched to ensure that the essential utilities are promptly searched for and found.  

SimplyCast’s Code Grey use case is designed to help hospitals effectively manage utility loss emergencies by digitizing their response processes. This solution leverages powerful alerting and live surveying tools, allowing for real-time communication during an incident. Additionally, it includes comprehensive reporting features that capture every message sent and received, ensuring a thorough record of the response efforts is received.  

Within a hospital code grey is launched to respond to essential utility losses. This could include utilities such as 

  •  Power Outage Water Supply Failure.  
  • Heating or Cooling System Failure  
  • Loss of climate control  
  • Loss of communication systems 
  • Ventilation System Failure   
  • Medical Gas Supply Failure  

Code greys cover a wide variety of utility losses, many of which require diligent responses to be made to ensure the safety of patients within the hospital. The use of a code grey use case aims to improve the overall application of code greys. 

SimplyCast’s Code Grey use case offers several notable benefits, including the following:  

Communications improvements: The use of the code grey use case enables hospital staff to automate large amounts of the communications that go out during a code grey. This allows staff to receive vital messages and respond accordingly automatically.  

Improve patient safety: When an essential utility is down, patients at high risk require prompt responses. This use case helps to improve response times and ensure all patients are accounted for, avoiding any delays at dire times.  

Reduced workload: By automating many of the tasks during the code grey event, staff can alleviate some of the workload during the event. This allows staff to prioritize more critical duties that must be accounted for throughout the code grey.  

Offer real-time updates: Another key feature of the code grey use case is real-time updates. This allows staff to stay up to date from when a code grey is launched to when it is resolved.  

These are just some of the notable benefits the code grey use case provides hospital facilities. This use case is a powerful tool for enhancing code grey responses. 

The live surveying tool works by allowing administrators to create surveys before launching a code grey. Surveys may be multiple choice, long form, or both. Live surveys can then be launched immediately during the incident and automatically record each response from staff members. Live surveys greatly improve the ability to foresee what has already been accounted for and keep current on crucial details.

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