Want to use artificial intelligence-enabled platforms to reduce costs and improve patient satisfaction? Look no further than the high-value assets in your hospital that stand to make the most money — expensive assets including operating suites, robotic technology, MRI equipment and, yes, highly paid clinicians.
Mark Davis, MD, chief operating officer at Baptist Health South Florida's Miami Cancer Institute, told Becker's that high-value assets should be at the top of the list when it comes to making resource utilization improvements.
Simply put, he said, if these assets are sitting idle, for whatever reason, they aren't making the hospital money.
"These assets are incredibly important to patients and, frankly, cost a significant amount of money to maintain. Fixed assets, like operating rooms, lose money when they are not in use. We all know this," Dr. Davis said, noting scheduling challenges are usually at fault when this happens.
The solution, he said, is to focus on using AI-enabled technologies to plan for better resource management — a win-win for patient experience and satisfaction as well as the hospital's bottom line.
"These are really high stakes situations. To be able to deliver patient-centered care in a timely fashion, we need to manage our high-value assets better," he said.
"Now, more than ever before, there is an urgent need to maximize strategic and highly efficient use of high-cost hospital assets. As hospital leaders, one of our primary goals is to advance our mission to provide outstanding care, while achieving financial results that sustain our institutions that are under pressure. We must ensure the ability to improve patient access to all who walk into our facilities."
Unexpected delays in the hospital — especially in the operating room — are more the norm than happenstance. Yet, not only do surgical delays, for example, create unnecessary anxiety for patients and their families, the financial effects on the hospital can quickly add up. The same thing can be said for managing other high-value assets, such chemotherapy infusion suites, MRI machines and robotic tools, among others.
Step 1: status check
Dr. Davis said the first step to making the most out of high value assets is to take a close look at current operations. Get a thorough understanding of how these assets are being utilized. For example, he suggested, take a look at how long it takes to set up an operating room for service.
How long is it taking to turn over the room between patients?
How does this information compare against the benchmark?
"Once you understand the current data, get together with a multidisciplinary team to make better use of these assets," he said. "What's really critical to success is to analyze the activities of every member of the team, from scheduling to cleaning the rooms to the doctors and the nurses, to help dissect what's happening. You need a full picture of the current data. View everything with an effort to become more lean to get you to a desired future state."
The goal, Dr. Davis said, is to get to a place where activities regarding high-cost assets are managed with a metric-driven approach that takes into consideration all related activities.
How AI can help
While Dr. Davis also told Becker's recently that hospitals should tread carefully when it comes to investing in AI solutions, machine-enabled technologies are "perfectly positioned" to help hospitals manage the high-cost assets, he said. "How many times are there scheduling issues that leave the operating rooms empty with patients waiting?"
AI can take a large amount of historic data and predict what will happen next — and that can be especially useful in scheduling these assets. Understanding how to limit downtime for these operating rooms and other assets goes a long way to making the most of other fixed assets like nurses, for example.
"AI is a tool. It's not a destination. Once you understand your current state of operations, you can see how a future with AI would work better. With data analysis, you can predict no-show rates and not waste time or resources," Dr. Davis said.