American Time Blog

When every second matters, each person in your clinic or hospital needs to be on the same time. Whether tracking surgery time, coordinating patient care, keeping appointments on time or recording tasks, precise time throughout a building or campus is essential.

In a clinic or hospital, every second counts. From floor to floor, and from each staff member to each patient, nearly every aspect of care depends on an entire building working in sync.  

As manufacturers race to stay competitive in an uncertain market, the importance of using digital technology to support efficient operations and engaged employees becomes more urgent. According to Manufacturing Global, “Many CIOs in the manufacturing sector view increasing operational efficiency and transforming the business as imperative to driving technology investments. With this in mind, IT platforms should provide the integration and coordination required for success.”

When someone walks into a building, their experience is essential. Occupants and visitors should feel safe and secure. Technology should support efficient work and precise, real-time communications.

Digital communication and signage in a building is an effective way to achieve this. In addition to sharing important daily news and messaging capabilities, modern communication platforms can deliver emergency alerts and clear instructions for keeping individuals safe and secure. In other words, a communication platform is most valuable when it can be used for both routine daily messaging and to bolster and reinforce critical emergency alerts. Let’s look at a few specific examples.

Follow the tips below to ensure your clocks and clock systems are ready for the time change.

Routinely check your clocks leading up to Daylight Saving Time

The beginning and end of Daylight Saving Time serve as natural reminders to make sure your facility's clocks are reliably keeping everyone on schedule.

To ensure that a wired system clock is syncing correctly, unplug it, wait at least 10 seconds, and plug it back in. The clock should be receiving synchronization signals from the master controller and display the correct time within 24 hours.

You can take a similar approach to your wireless system battery-operated clocks. Take the battery out, assuring the clock hands come to a complete stop, and reinstall it.

This is a good time to check the life of your batteries, too. If a battery is supplying 1.5 volts or more, it should be good to go. The clock will automatically be on time within 12 hours or sooner.

Now that daylight saving time (DST) has passed, you may discover that some of your clocks didn’t adjust properly. As a result, you’re dealing with employee or staff complaints, classes or shift changes may be off, and maintenance teams are bogged down with work orders.

Here are some troubleshooting tips for clocks that aren’t correctly adjusting for DST.

When a building or campus’s clock system runs on a Wi-Fi network or Power over Ethernet (PoE) connection, it’s an elegant solution because it solves the need for synchronized time simply and effectively: Each clocks displays the same, precise time that it retrieves using an existing Wi-Fi network or via an Ethernet cable. Both Wi-Fi and PoE clocks are in the IP Network category of clock systems.  

Some companies assume that they need to purchase and operate an expensive time server to support an IP Network clock system. As a global provider of clock systems to some of the most recognized companies around the world, we can authoritatively say that spending thousands on a time server could be redundant, unnecessary and a waste of capital if it’s not needed for the application.  

Inefficiencies in the workplace are not always easy to spot. You won't see employees literally setting $100 bills on fire, but inevitably, there will be times during the day when otherwise productive work hours might as well be going up in smoke.

And this isn't necessarily due to a lack of work ethic or motivation. At DMR Electronics, a manufacturer of industrial electronic components and wiring harnesses, employees sometimes had no other choice but to waste time standing around while waiting for meetings to get underway. But, it wasn't their fault. Since there was no single time source to rely on, their schedules were easily thrown out of whack.

The phenomenon led DMR to research synchronized clock systems, ultimately choosing American Time to bring an added sense of order to its daily operations.

Float Euphoria, based in Kennewick, Washington, isn’t your typical spa. They offer a variety of stress-fighting services like massage, cupping, and floatation therapy, a weightless spa experience that feels like you’re floating on top of the water — because you are.

A Tight Schedule in a Relaxed Environment

In order for client’s to get the most out of their massage and float experiences, things have to happen right on time. Both the massage and flotation services must stick to a strict schedule for cleaning, maintenance, and to keep appointments from running awry.

As far as we know, time travel hasn't been invented yet, so when hospital records show a patient leaving one area at a certain time and arriving at their destination two minutes earlier, something isn't right.

At the Essentia Healthcare Campus in Duluth, Minnesota, this discrepancy became problematic when billing the patient’s insurance company, who didn't buy the proposition that someone could be in two places at once, thus refused to pay the bills when that's what the records showed.

This is a story of how changing one aspect of hospital operations saved a facility thousands of dollars, illustrating just how important it is that all the clocks in your facility stay in sync.