How One VA Solved the RTLS Challenges That Cost Others $543 Million

By Mike Maurer, President, MGM Solutions | 35+ Years in RTLS

Originally published on LinkedIn by Mike Maurer, May 2018. Republished here with expanded content for our website visitors.

The Veterans Affairs healthcare system has spent hundreds of millions of dollars attempting to deploy RTLS technology across its medical centers — with mixed results at best. While some facilities struggled with Wi-Fi and BLE-based systems that failed to deliver reliable location data, one VA facility quietly demonstrated that a fundamentally different approach could solve the challenges that plagued others.

The Pittsburgh VA Medical Center’s deployment of SecurTRAK proved that a triple-technology approach — combining 433 MHz RF, 125 KHz Low Frequency exciters, and Infrared readers — could deliver the accuracy, reliability, and scalability that life-safety applications demand.

The RTLS Challenge at Scale

VA medical centers present some of the most challenging environments for indoor positioning systems:

• Massive campuses spanning multiple buildings, floors, and outdoor areas
• Dense construction with concrete walls, lead-lined rooms, and fire-rated barriers
• Electromagnetic interference from medical equipment, telemetry systems, and existing wireless networks
• Life-safety requirements where a missed alert or inaccurate location could cost a life
• 24/7 operations with no tolerance for system downtime

The failed $543 million VA RTLS project demonstrated what happens when the wrong technology is chosen for these demanding environments. Systems based on Wi-Fi and BLE repeatedly showed locations on incorrect floors or hundreds of feet from actual positions.

Pittsburgh’s Triple-Technology Solution

Rather than relying on a single frequency, the Pittsburgh VA deployed SecurTRAK’s patented triple-technology architecture:

Layer 1: 433 MHz RF for Campus-Wide Coverage

The 433 MHz frequency penetrates hospital construction materials reliably, providing continuous tracking across all buildings, floors, stairwells, and outdoor areas. With antennas spaced 50-60 feet apart, the system achieves 15-foot accuracy — well within the VA Police requirement of 25-foot tolerance.

Layer 2: 125 KHz LF Exciters for Precision Chokepoints

Low Frequency exciters at doorways, elevators, and stairwells create electromagnetic detection zones that identify exactly which floor a tag is on and which direction it’s traveling. Response time is measured in milliseconds.

Layer 3: Infrared for Room-Level Detail

Where line-of-sight conditions permit, IR readers add bed-level precision for clinical applications like automated rounding documentation and patient identification.

Results That Speak for Themselves

The Pittsburgh deployment demonstrated measurable outcomes:

• Real-time patient tracking with location accuracy exceeding VA Police standards
• Wireless staff duress with sub-second alert delivery and precise officer location
• Asset tracking across millions of square feet of indoor and outdoor space
• Building system integration — elevator locks, door controls, and CCTV camera activation triggered automatically by tag movement
• Scalability proven — the same infrastructure supports patient safety, staff safety, and operational efficiency simultaneously

The success at Pittsburgh stands in stark contrast to facilities that spent far more money on technologies that couldn’t reliably locate a tag to the correct floor.

Lessons for Healthcare Organizations

The Pittsburgh VA experience offers clear guidance for any healthcare facility evaluating RTLS:

1. Frequency matters more than brand name. The physics of radio propagation don’t change based on marketing claims. 433 MHz penetrates hospital construction; 2.4 GHz does not.
2. Life-safety demands redundancy. A single-technology approach creates single points of failure. Triple-technology provides overlapping coverage layers.
3. Design for your hardest use case. If the system can track an eloping dementia patient through concrete stairwells at 3 AM, it can handle asset tracking and workflow optimization easily.
4. Insist on field-tested results. Ask vendors for accuracy data from comparable facilities — not lab demonstrations or conference booth demos.
5. Plan for expansion. The right infrastructure investment today supports use cases you haven’t imagined yet.

Learn more about how SecurTRAK’s approach differs from conventional RTLS systems.

About MGM Solutions

M.G.M. Computer System, Inc. (dba MGM Solutions) is a CVE-certified Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) with 40+ federal life-safety RTLS contracts, multiple RTLS patents, and three decades of field-tested deployments. We serve VA medical centers, public hospitals, assisted living facilities, and correctional facilities nationwide.