- Berkley East Convalescent Hospital recently installed 100 new in-room patient displays from Panasonic to improve the patient experience and modernize the facility.
Located in Santa Monica, CA, this private nursing home provides a variety of services for seniors and disabled adults, accepting more than 100 patient admissions a month.
In 2011, Berkley East management decided it was time to remodel the facility, including an upgrade to the patient-room televisions, replacing outdated CRT models. The hospital established a series of strategic objectives for the new in-room professional-grade HDTVs that would be purchased: They needed to meet UL60065 (Annex Q) safety requirements, include pillow speaker remote / audio nurse call system integration, be reliable and durable, feature a stylish design and excellent picture quality, be easily sanitized and include an excellent warranty program for on-site technical support.
The hospital ran a series of tests on three different in-room patient displays, including the ease of programming and system-wide cloning, auto-channel select, ease of overall controls via the remote, strength of electrical cords and pillow speaker connections, as well as screen brightness, contrast and color. After the evaluation, Berkeley East purchased 100 Panasonic 32-inch TH-32LRH30U LCD patient room displays.
“All major IT investments come with their share of risks and purchasing displays for our facility was no different,” said Galper. “We needed a reliable HDTV that minimized these risks by delivering quality, functionality and value. Failure to achieve these objectives would result in a quality of life issue for our residents and negative financial impact for the company. With its excellent HD picture quality, competitive price, UL60065 Annex Q Certification and ease of integration with our existing pillow speaker system, the Panasonic LRH Series LCD patient room display exceeded our expectations.”
Galper also noted that an added benefit of the new displays installation was their compatibility with the previous displays’ mounting brackets—Panasonic’s 32-inch TH-32LRH30U HDTV required no adjustment to the brackets already being used as both the TV bracket and the new Panasonic display are standard VESA mount hole patterns—this saved both time and money via reduced labor costs. Additionally, the display’s metallic, charcoal, scratch-resistant casing hides visible fingerprints and dust and is easy to sanitize—adding supplementary value to the solution.
The LRH Series is also Pro-Idiom capable, allowing for system wide cloning of content from a single location—enabling the facility to future-proof should it ever want to expand content delivered to patient rooms. He also said that patients and their families enjoy the display’s SD card slot, which enables photos and other content to be shared.
In addition, Galper praised Panasonic customer support. “Panasonic sales and technical support teams and distribution partners provided a high level of support and immediate responses,” said Galper. “Panasonic’s large distribution network enabled me to locate a few partners in the Santa Monica, CA community and enabled me to do some competitive shopping—an option that didn’t exist from other patient room display manufacturers.”
