Due to rising demand for healthcare service, hospitals and health systems are increasingly facing pressure to add capacity, while constrained by finite resources like beds and staff. To maximize capacity and meet demand, healthcare leaders are relying on intelligent workflow automation to increase efficiency and throughput.
During a Becker's Hospital Review webinar sponsored by LeanTaaS, Susan Grimwood, executive director of logistics and patient throughput for Sarasota (Fla.) Memorial Health Care System, and Kathy LeFrancois, RN, director of patient flow and nursing resources for Sarasota Memorial Hospital – Venice, shared insights into how their health system transformed its capacity, including a 13-hour decrease in average length of stay, with a combination of new processes, programs and AI-enabled technology.
Four key takeaways were:
- Start by identifying and predicting bottlenecks and changes in patient census. When Sarasota Memorial began working to streamline its operations around capacity, they first looked at where bottlenecks were occurring. They found that bottlenecks arose when patients were waiting for imaging, when patients were cleared to be discharged but had to wait for hours as well as at several other friction points. Based on the awareness of these bottlenecks, Ms. Grimwood and Sarasota Memorial began using predictive and prescriptive analytics to forecast ebbs and flows in patient census with great specificity so that hospital units could staff accordingly.
- Ensure staff buy-in and have a plan to change the culture. Creating a centralized approach to managing capacity is a huge change for all parties involved. "It is very difficult when someone comes into your world and says, 'We're going to do this now.' It can be perceived like, 'I wasn't doing it well,'" Ms. Grimwood said. "So you really have to have those conversations with all of those departments and make sure that you're not just doing things, you're doing things that are meaningful, that are the best outcome for the patient and that are really meeting your organization and system goals."
- Use intelligent workflow automation to streamline discharges. Benefits that Sarasota Memorial has seen from using AI-enabled automation include improved collaboration and communication from shift to shift, and a consistent and repeatable discharge process. "We have been able to discharge 30 to 50 percent of our daily census every day," Ms. LeFrancois said. "And honestly, that is the only way we have been able to function at this level."
- Complement technology with programs aligned to the same goals. For example, a "departure lounge" at Sarasota Memorial gets patients out of beds earlier, while they're still tended to in a comfortable environment overseen by healthcare professionals. Transfer centers and coordinators, meanwhile, can help speed logistics, while real-time, customizable dashboards can help coordinators figure out where hot spots are and where help is needed.
Sarasota Memorial's capacity project has yielded impressive outcomes: a 13-hour decrease in average length of stay and a 10 percent decrease in discharge processing time, along with 40 percent of discharges completed by 1 p.m. daily.
With the right tools and technologies, such as AI-powered analytics and intelligent automation solutions like that offered by LeanTaaS, hospitals can actively manage and improve their capacity.
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