From Guesswork to Precision: How RTLS Technology is Reshaping Healthcare Operations
In healthcare, the margin for error is thin, and the pressure to do more with less is mounting. Whether you're overseeing a 5,000-bed health system, a 100-bed behavioral healthcare center, or a 10-bed rural hospital, operational clarity isn’t a luxury. It’s a necessity.
Yet many healthcare systems still rely on memory, paper logs, or disconnected spreadsheets to locate equipment, ensure staff safety, or monitor patient movement. The result? A persistent disconnect between what’s happening on the floor and what your systems can tell you, costing precious time, money, and trust.
Enter Real-Time Location Systems (RTLS). This location-aware technology isn’t new, but its modern applications—and measurable ROI—are redefining what’s possible for healthcare leaders.
What Is RTLS?
RTLS uses sensors, tags, or badges—worn by staff, attached to equipment, or embedded in rooms—to provide real-time visibility into the location and movement of people and assets. These signals feed into a central software platform, giving administrators actionable data to improve safety, efficiency, and decision-making.
Unlike GPS, which fails indoors, RTLS is purpose-built for clinical spaces. Depending on the system, it can use Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), Wi-Fi, infrared, ultrasound, or a hybrid approach to deliver accurate location tracking with minimal infrastructure.
But RTLS is more than dots on a map. It’s rich with metadata—timestamps, dwell times, temperature readings, and interaction history—that feed directly into clinical, operational, and financial workflows.
Proven Use Cases for RTLS in Healthcare
1) Staff Safety & Duress Alerting
Workplace violence in healthcare is a growing crisis. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, healthcare workers made up 73% of all nonfatal workplace injuries due to violence in 2018.
With RTLS-enabled duress badges, staff can discreetly summon help and transmit their precise location in seconds. Whether in an ED, behavioral health unit, or long-term care facility, real-time response can mean the difference between escalation and de-escalation.
VersaBadge specializes in this functionality, offering wearable badges that integrate directly into daily workflows—no bulky hardware or lagging response chains.
VersaBadge specializes in this functionality, offering wearable badges that integrate directly into daily workflows, without outdated, bulky hardware or lagging response chains.
2) Asset Management & Equipment Optimization
Ask any nurse or tech, and they’ll have a story about a missing IV pump, bladder scanner, or monitor when they needed it most. Equipment loss and underutilization are everyday headaches in healthcare.
RTLS helps eliminate the guesswork by making equipment findable and accountable. With real-time visibility into where assets are, how often they’re used, and when they’re due for maintenance, healthcare teams can reduce unnecessary rentals, avoid duplicate purchases, and ensure preventive service happens on time.
The result: less time searching, more time delivering care, and more efficient use of every dollar spent on equipment.
3) Throughput Optimization, & Time Studies
Patient movement through emergency, surgical, and inpatient settings is notoriously difficult to manage. Delays in room turnover, uncoordinated handoffs, and poor visibility across departments contribute to increased length of stay, reduced satisfaction scores, and missed revenue opportunities.
RTLS provides a real-time view of patient movement, helping care teams pinpoint bottlenecks and coordinate transitions more efficiently.
But the value of location-aware technology extends beyond operational throughput. It also plays a growing role in financial reporting and reimbursement accuracy, particularly in Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs).
Cost-based reimbursement is a lifeline for CAHs, and in order to receive accurate reimbursement from CMS, hospitals must provide properly substantiated cost reports. That includes detailed time studies that reflect how staff allocate their hours across reimbursable and non-reimbursable activities. VersaBadge captures time and presence data through badge-based location tracking, helping hospitals ensure their ED standby hours are accurately allocated and reimbursed.
4) Infection Control, Contact Tracing, & Hand Hygiene Compliance
COVID-19 exposed the shortcomings of manual contact tracing. RTLS enables retrospective movement mapping—helping infection prevention teams respond quickly and confidently to potential outbreaks.
The same data can also confirm whether environmental protocols—such as room cleaning—were performed as scheduled, or highlight where lapses may have occurred.
RTLS also supports hand hygiene compliance monitoring. By integrating with hand sanitizer and soap dispensers, the system can track when and where hygiene events occur—and when they don’t. This enables hospitals to track compliance trends across departments, identify coaching opportunities, and reinforce behaviors that protect patients and staff. Instead of relying solely on manual audits or spot checks, teams gain continuous visibility into one of the most critical infection prevention practices.
5) Patient Safety: Proactive Rounding & Elopement Monitoring
RTLS is emerging as a powerful tool in proactive patient safety, helping care teams intervene early, reduce harm, and create safer healing environments.
Automated rounding is one such application. By tracking staff movement in and out of patient rooms, RTLS provides clear, time-stamped visibility into when and how often patients are checked on. This supports hourly or Q15 rounding protocols, identifies missed visits, and helps leaders close the loop on fall prevention and patient satisfaction initiatives, without relying solely on self-reported documentation.
In behavioral health, memory care, and med-surg units, elopement monitoring is another critical use case. RTLS-enabled badges can trigger instant alerts when a patient approaches or crosses predefined boundaries—like exits, elevators, or stairwells—allowing staff to intervene before a safety event occurs.
These real-time alerts don’t just reduce risk—they also build staff confidence. Knowing the system is continuously monitoring high-risk areas helps teams stay focused on care delivery, rather than constantly watching doors or double-checking logs.
When patient safety is automated, hospitals shift from a reactive to a preventative approach—catching issues before they escalate and delivering safer care with less stress on frontline teams.
The Financial Impact: Beyond Efficiency
RTLS isn’t just a tool for operations—it’s a lever for financial performance. From reclaiming lost hours to unlocking new reimbursement opportunities, the return on investment is tangible.
But the real ROI is even more compelling when systems like VersaBadge are tailored to the specific needs of healthcare finance leaders. VersaBadge’s mission is to make location-aware technology more accessible and affordable—especially for sectors like behavioral health, long-term care, and rural hospitals that have traditionally been priced out of RTLS solutions.
By leveraging cost-effective Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) infrastructure, VersaBadge enables new use cases that were once considered financially out of reach. This opens the door for facilities of all sizes to leverage location data to drive safety, compliance, and efficiency without the burden of legacy RTLS costs. In many cases, it’s not just about saving money. It’s about making money—unlocking new revenue streams and recouping reimbursements that would otherwise be lost.
In 2024 alone, VersaBadge customers unlocked over $23 million in additional Medicare reimbursement through accurate tracking of emergency department standby hours in Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs). By capturing precise, badge-based time and presence data, they had tangible, defensible data to substantiate and defend Part-A time on their Cost Reports.
That’s not just cost savings; it's real money, directly to the bottom line.
Beyond reimbursement, VersaBadge also helps reduce soft costs and avoid financial risk. Whether it’s mitigating workplace violence through faster duress response, or alerting staff of potential patient elopement, RTLS creates “non-events” that protect your bottom line.
For executive teams under pressure to do more with less, RTLS transforms from a capital expense into a strategic asset. It delivers financial returns, operational clarity, and clinical safety—all with one unified system.
Overcoming Cultural and Operational Barriers
As with any new system, adoption depends on how well the technology integrates into the daily routines of frontline staff.
A few practical recommendations for healthcare executives:
• Start small. Begin with one or two high-impact use cases, such as staff duress alerting or ED time studies, that solve measurable problems and demonstrate quick value. A focused rollout builds confidence and lays the groundwork for broader expansion over time.
• Connect to the "why." Demonstrate to staff how RTLS will simplify their work, not add to it.
• Train the champions. Equip department leads to answer questions and advocate for the system among peers.
• Measure and share early wins. Tracking time saved, incidents avoided, or compliance improvements can help justify expansion.
Why RTLS Matters Now More Than Ever
Healthcare leaders are navigating a complex mix of challenges, including staffing shortages, rising costs, and increased scrutiny of safety, compliance, and performance. In that context, better visibility isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s a strategic necessity.
RTLS has quietly become one of the most adaptable tools available to health systems. It breaks down silos between clinical, operational, and administrative teams by delivering real-time data that supports faster decisions, safer environments, and more efficient resource use.
And its relevance is growing. As the industry moves toward more data-driven, AI-powered operations, location and movement data are becoming critical inputs. Whether it’s optimizing staffing, streamlining workflows, or preventing risk, RTLS provides the backbone for smarter, more responsive healthcare systems.
Final Thought: The Value of Knowing
In healthcare, we spend a lot of time talking about what we don’t have enough of—staff, time, capital, certainty. But sometimes, what’s missing is simply visibility.
RTLS helps fill that gap.
VersaBadge is making it easier for organizations of all sizes to get started. Whether your priority is safety, compliance, or operational clarity, location-aware tech is no longer a futuristic add-on. It’s a pragmatic step toward a more efficient, accountable healthcare system.
