Imagine standing in the middle of a hospital emergency room and seeing eight clocks showing vastly different times. If you were a nurse responsible for administering medicine, or a doctor trying to stay on time with rounds, how would you know which clock to trust?

This was the situation at Beloit Memorial Hospital in Beloit, Wisconsin, before Primex Wireless and its GPS Wireless Clock System came to the rescue. The time on the clocks varied anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour, says Ray Bressler, master electrician at Beloit Memorial.

“In the emergency and surgery departments where everything from dispensing of medicine to time of birth and death is tracked by the minute, this was a critical problem,” Bressler says.
The problem of inaccurate and out-of-sync time had been a problem at Beloit Memorial for many years. But now, with the Primex Wireless system, the clocks display perfectly accurate time, all the time.

The GPS system is simple and economical to install. Each system consists of a GPS receiver and an FM transmitter, plus an unlimited number of freestanding electric or five-year battery-operated clocks. There is no hardwiring required. You plug in the transmitter and position its receiver where it can capture a signal from the U.S. Government’s Global Positioning System satellites orbiting the earth. The transmitter then broadcasts the time via a localized FM signal to the clocks, which then self-adjust to the correct time.

Beloit Memorial’s 350,000-square-foot campus stretches more than 20 acres—but size is no matter with the Primex Wireless. As for the clocks, installation has been a breeze throughout the hospital, according to Bressler. He has just set the new clocks to the correct time and hung them right where the old clocks had been.

In addition to saving the cost of hardwiring, Beloit Memorial has saved on labor costs because the clocks do not have to be reset for any reason. Neither the transmitter nor the clocks need to be reset for power interruptions. When the batteries are replaced after five years, the clock remembers the time. And unlike ordinary quartz clocks, GPS wireless clocks automatically adjust for Daylight Saving Time changes.

For Beloit Memorial, the need for accurate, synchronized time was the most significant reason for getting the new system. “But even so,” Bressler says, “budget is always a concern and this system is less expensive than most of the others out there.”

The GPS Wireless Clock System is more reliable than previous generations of clocks that received an AM signal from the NIST in Colorado. Since it uses a combination of GPS and localized FM signals, atmospheric variances and distance from the AM radio tower are not an issue.
Primex Wireless also offers a bell tone generator and software for synchronizing computers with the clocks. Clocks are available in analog and digital models.

For more for more information call 800-537-0464 or go to www.primexwireless.com.