A Chicago-area hospital's delivery robots return 4,125.5 staff hours

Nurses walking hallways instead of caring for patients

Hospital work is full of short trips. A lab sample, a medication, a meal tray or a bundle of linens has to travel from one floor or department to another, and each trip pulls a nurse or technician away from the bedside. Across a full shift, that walking adds up to a real share of the day.

Local news coverage tied the rollout to nurse shortages. The deployment was reported as a response to those shortages, with the aim of returning time to clinical staff.

• Lab samples and medications moving between floors
• Meal trays and linens on fixed routes
• Supplies needed at short notice

Two robots per campus, then a phased rollout

The health system began with two robots at each of two campuses, according to the robot supplier's published case study. A small start is the usual way to test routes, elevator timing and handoff habits before a fleet grows.

Deployment work of this kind generally follows a set order: map the routes, train the staff who load and receive each run, go live in phases so care areas keep working, and set service coverage for the day a unit needs attention.

• Map routes and elevator access before go live
• Train staff who load, send and receive each run
• Go live in phases so care areas keep running
• Set service coverage so one down unit does not stop a route

Deliveries and hours over the reported window

Over the reported window of August 2022 to March 2023, the hospital's robot completed 7,298 deliveries. The robot supplier attributes 4,125.5 clinical staff hours to that work, and that figure is the one most readers will carry away.

Those hours are the vendor's own figure, presented as time returned to clinical staff. Treat it as the supplier's account, and test it against your own floors, routes and shift patterns before it shapes a budget.

Each delivery was a trip a person no longer had to make, which is why the count and the hours belong together in one story.

Where a lease fits a hospital delivery program

Service Robot Co. is a full service, vendor neutral integrator for US businesses. We select the right robots across manufacturers, then finance, deploy, integrate, train and service every unit through a nationwide US engineer network, so one partner handles the whole lifecycle. Our robots reach customers on a three year lease with one fixed payment, quoted after a site assessment. This deployment was not ours. It is a documented example we analyze, and the questions it raises are the ones a hospital team should ask before any delivery program starts.

For a hospital delivery robot lease, those questions are route layout, elevator access, go live support and who answers when a unit goes down. Robot lease options that include on site dispatch, remote triage and spare unit coverage speak to that last concern directly. A robot pilot program can start with one leased unit and grow once the routes prove out, which keeps the first decision small.