Inside the Hospital of the Future: How Connected Safety Is Redefining Psychiatric Care
Behavioral Health Business
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Executive Forum
Every behavioral health executive faces a common challenge: traditional manual rounds leave patients unmonitored for over 90% of the day. For one provider, this reality became clear when an older patient arrived so agitated he could barely speak. Staff needed to understand why.
Fortunately, the unit was equipped with LIO’s connected safety platform, which unifies ambient monitoring, digital rounding, and operational management. This allowed staff to view continuous data revealing that the man was waking up regularly at night to use the bathroom. The following morning, they tested him for a UTI and, once treated, he became calmer and engaged positively with staff.
That’s not always possible in every behavioral health facility.
"Most facilities can only observe a patient for less than 10% of the day—you have eyes on each patient for such a short amount of time," says Todd Haedrich, CEO of LIO. "And patients often present with other conditions, which may be hard to discern."
The above outcome wasn’t solely due to technology adoption; it was the result of a clear strategy. The facility took critical steps before that patient arrived, evaluating their current and future operational needs and finding a partner to help them meet those goals.
As Haedrich notes, modernizing a facility for proactive care requires leadership to confront three key operational realities currently straining the behavioral health landscape:
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Rising acuity and unit violence: As patient acuity increases, functional psychiatric capacity decreases. Roughly a third of behavioral health visits boarded in 2020 and nearly half by 2024 due to full beds in emergency departments. These patients, often in severe crisis, contribute to violent-injury rates on psychiatric units eight times higher than typical acute hospitals, up more than 70% in a decade.
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Severe staffing shortages: Behavioral health nursing carries the highest turnover rate at 22.5%, according to the 2024 NSI staffing report.
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Technology adoption gaps: Many facilities struggle to adopt and implement technology solutions that can improve care delivery, reduce costs, and enhance staff productivity.