When it comes to command center strategies, patient flow is a core problem that must be solved. While bed management systems are great at automating a few core workflows, they aren't enough. To create a successful command center strategy, organizations need a different approach for optimizing patient flow based on different types of technology and expertise.
During a recent Becker's Healthcare webinar sponsored by LeanTaaS, two experts from LeanTaaS — Jason Harber, vice president, client services, and Bill Griffith, director, operational excellence — discussed how healthcare organizations are transforming their command center strategies using AI to see increased discharges, decreased opportunity days, reductions in transfer declines and more admissions.
Four key takeaways were:
- People, process and technology are essential for optimizing patient flow. It's critical to anticipate issues and proactively resolve them before they occur. LeanTaaS uses AI-powered automation to predict surges, prioritize patient discharges and anticipate staffing needs. Integrated workflows orchestrate tasks, communicate seamlessly throughout the organization and coexist with current tools. Change management makes it easy for the frontline to do the right thing. "LeanTaaS automatically generates tasks for the frontline team so they can do the right thing with minimal effort," Mr. Harber said. "The goal is frictionless flow."
- LeanTaaS addresses patient flow challenges in ways that the EHR cannot. iQueue for Inpatient Flow is predictive, prescriptive, automated and modular. The Discharge Toolkit connects teams to local discharge activities occurring across the organization. The Capacity Navigator shows capacity in real time and predictively across the entire health system, on every level of care, in every care setting. "This allows teams to run from the same playbook, so they can make quick coordination decisions," Mr. Harber said. The Workforce Planner enables staffing practices to operate side by side with flow activities to ensure that organizations are optimizing nursing capacity.
- Hospitals and health systems don't have to go it alone on the journey to patient flow excellence. LeanTaaS focuses on five key steps when it works with new clients:
- Establishing a governance team
- Redefining the role of the transfer center
- Hardwiring capacity management practices
- Standardizing discharge planning
- Centralizing staffing across the system
"From a scaling standpoint, we work with clients in many ways," Mr. Griffith said. "We can start with a single hospital and then expand to a larger footprint. We can also work with more than one hospital at a time."
- By reimagining the command center framework, healthcare organizations see sustained impact and ROI. Hospitals and health systems that have adopted iQueue for Inpatient Flow see:
- 5% - 10% more discharges per day
- 5% - 10% decrease in opportunity days
- 25% - 30% reduction in transfer declines
- 5% - 8% increase in patient admissions
"Everything we do is built to fit our clients' culture and objectives, and our team stays with organizations for the lifetime of the relationship," Mr. Harber said. "We know that performance improvement and organizational objectives change over time. The 'TaaS' in LeanTaaS is 'transformation-as-a-service', and we're here to help for the long haul."
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