Safety under pressure: Balancing RTLS safety and staff privacy

Real-time location systems (RTLS) can shave precious seconds off a duress response, but they also raise a red flag for many clinicians. Andrea Greco, senior vice president of healthcare sales at CENTEGIX, breaks down the privacy tension at the heart of location-based safety tools.

Greco notes that nurses and other health care workers are trained professionals, not warehouse inventory, and they push back hard when they feel “tracked” on the job. Nursing unions have echoed those concerns, especially when they fear location data could be used punitively for timekeeping, discipline or productivity monitoring.

The difference between adoption and resistance, she says, comes down to design and intent. When RTLS is narrowly configured so badges are only locatable during an active alert — and that purpose is clearly communicated — staff are far more willing to wear the devices and see them as a genuine safety net rather than a surveillance tool.

For practices and health systems, the message is straightforward: if you want RTLS to protect your people, build and message it as a safety-first system, with tight limits on when and how location data is used.