Poor inpatient utilization and in-house inefficiencies are the common culprits behind slow throughput, backed up EDs and lost revenue for hospitals, especially with 60 percent of inpatient admissions coming from the ED. However, by putting actionable information in the hands of executives, hospitals can successfully address inpatient flow and bed management issues, thus positively impacting ED boarding problems that impede patient throughput and can lead to lower patient satisfaction scores.
Change that can come from the top
By driving operational visibility throughout your hospital, you can empower executives to take a more proactive approach in identifying and correcting issues before the entire hospital is affected. At Good Shepherd, we provide our executives with real-time data in a dashboard format, including ED saturation, ED nurse workload, inpatient census, and pending inpatient discharges with OpCenter, executive decision-support software from MEDHOST.
The analytical tools enable hospital leaders to make data-driven decisions, as well as unify departments through process change. For example, our ED utilizes a feature called Bed Ahead. Bed Ahead allows inpatient staff to have advance notice of patients likely to be admitted, such as high acuity ED patients who present with obvious trauma, cardiac ailments, or other illnesses. Bed Ahead improves throughput because inpatient departments can proactively prepare for incoming admissions, making for a smoother and more efficient transition from the ED to the inpatient floor. Our experience is that executives can be given access to real-time data to help them facilitate change of inefficient, time-consuming management and care practices that can impede hospital-wide improvements.
At Good Shepherd, increased visibility of real-time patient flow data has not only helped executives proactively manage department workloads but also created a greater sense of accountability among all clinical staff. This has been key to the beginning of a house-wide culture change. Now that our staff is more aware of bottlenecks throughout the throughput continuum, they help beyond the walls of their own departments. In our process, when ED saturation is high, Good Shepherd’s inpatient nursing staff now automatically assists with transport of admitted patients to prevent ED boarding and hospital-wide slowdowns.
Identify bottlenecks and develop action plans
In addition to contributing to culture change, access to decision support tools provides executives with the visibility necessary to more effectively coordinate resources and establish action plans. For instance, when Good Shepherd’s ED saturation is higher than normal, we can immediately jump to action because we know where our bottlenecks are rather than having to spend time identifying problem areas. This has resulted in being able to accommodate an influx of ED patients more effectively than in previous years. We also know when to adjust resources in order to maximize the value and efficiency of our staff and processes.
With access to real-time information, hospital leaders and staff set into motion pre-established policies and procedures to handle slowdowns before they become unmanageable and create house-wide problems.
Empowering executives with rich data and decision-support tools can revolutionize the way hospitals operate. Now more than ever, especially as we work toward healthcare reform, it’s important to deploy solutions that make an immediate impact on hospitals’ efficiencies, patient experience, and the bottom line. We have found OpCenter to be a valuable tool to help us improve patient flow inefficiencies and improve our overall patient experience.
Ron Short is the vice president of operations at Good Shepherd Medical Center in Longview, Texas and is a Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives. Short oversees emergency services, patient flow operations, cardiology services, and inpatient rehabilitative services. He can be reached at rshort@gsmc.org.
