Becker’s recently sat down with Jason Harber, Vice President of Client Services, iQueue for Inpatient Flow at LeanTaaS and Niel Oscarson, Research Director at KLAS Research to discuss inpatient flow challenges and AI-powered solutions.
Question: What are the main challenges in patient flow and how can AI-powered solutions help?
Jason Harber: Hospitals all over the U.S. are having capacity issues, leading to unnecessary stays and higher costs overall — making patient flow a critical challenge to solve. The main challenges in inpatient flow include the unpredictability of patient admissions and discharges, coordination between various departments, and effective staff and resource allocation. Often, hospitals struggle with high boarding times, leading to overcrowded emergency departments and delayed admissions. Traditional solutions may automate certain processes, but they fail to provide the predictive insights and real-time adjustments necessary to manage these complexities effectively.
LeanTaaS has a solution called iQueue for Inpatient Flow that addresses these challenges by leveraging AI to predict patient flow patterns, optimize discharge processes, forecast staffing needs, and enhance coordination across departments. We also integrate our solution seamlessly into existing workflows, and provide robust change management to train frontline users. When staff know what’s coming, hospitals can reduce boarding times and length of stay and also improve overall patient satisfaction and operational efficiency.
Q: What are the core components of LeanTaaS's iQueue for Inpatient Flow solution?
JH: Our iQueue for Inpatient Flow solution comprises three main modules: the Discharge Toolkit, Capacity Navigator, and Workforce Planner. The Discharge Toolkit provides patient-level guidance that mobilizes coordinated discharge execution, focusing teams on the right activities at the right time to drive efficient patient throughput. The Capacity Navigator monitors customizable capacity protocols, proactively identifies and responds to constraints, and provides real-time insights with automated status updates to improve patient care, throughput, and resource utilization. The Workforce Planner offers an all-in-one platform to proactively address coverage needs, optimize shift allocation across units, and balance patient assignments for improved care continuity and better workload distribution. These modules work together to drive care progression, orchestrate daily discharges and transfers, and streamline daily staffing.
Just as significant as our technology is our transformation-as-a-service mode, which ensures continuous benefits and adapts to evolving needs. We don't just implement our technology and leave; we partner with our customers to sustain and build on the improvements over time. This approach leads to lasting impact and real ROI.
iQueue for Inpatient Flow is currently being used to support over 23,000 beds at 100 hospitals across 28 health systems to eliminate capacity management bottlenecks and improve patient experience and staff satisfaction. On average, LeanTaaS customers discharge 10% more patients per day and increase patient admissions by 3%.
Q: How does KLAS evaluate solutions?
Niel Oscarson: At KLAS our mission is to improve delivery of healthcare technology. And we do that by evaluating software solutions through a simple but unique approach — we remove any of our own opinions and interview hospital and healthcare providers who are using the product, and those evaluations lead to our KLAS scores.
We conducted extensive interviews with customers who are actually in the middle of using iQueue for Inpatient Flow. To get qualitative data, we ask rating questions like “does the product have the needed functionality?”, “how quickly do you see outcomes?”, and “would you buy the product again?”. We also gather a lot of quantitative feedback to learn about not just the technology but to also learn about a vendor’s culture and relationship management. We asked questions like “does LeanTaaS keep their promises?”, “how much executive involvement does LeanTaaS provide?”, and “what’s your experience like working with LeanTaaS?”. Then we go through all of that customer feedback and that informs a solution’s ultimate rating.
Q: What is the customer feedback about iQueue for Inpatient Flow?
NO: Our research at KLAS has shown that LeanTaaS' customers are exceptionally satisfied with iQueue for Inpatient Flow — it has a rating of 95 (out of 100), and the average score for KLAS-rated software products was 79.6 for 2024. Customers praised the predictive capabilities of the AI technology and the seamless integration with their existing workflows. Importantly, they also highlighted the positive impact of LeanTaaS's change management and ongoing support, emphasizing the value of having dedicated representatives who ensure their success.
There's not a hospital out there that is not interested in reducing length of stay and boarding, LeanTaaS delivers on that outcome, among others like improved throughput, and improved nursing coverage. The majority of respondents said that those outcomes came within the first six months. Customers expressed high levels of satisfaction with both the product and the partnership. 100% of customer respondents are satisfied with their investment, believe that LeanTaaS keeps all promises, and would purchase iQueue for Inpatient Flow again.
Q: How important are change management services in healthcare technology and how does LeanTaaS approach this?
NO: KLAS firmly believes that a good product alone only leads to moderate success. A great product with a poor relationship often leads to failure. What leads to transformational success is when you have an excellent product and a great relationship. Change management is such a critical part of relationship building and long-term success. We heard customers shout from the rooftops about how wonderful their relationship with LeanTaaS is, particularly because they provide dedicated change management support to ensure smooth implementation and adoption of their solutions. Our research indicates that customers highly appreciate this aspect, as it helps them achieve sustainable improvements and avoid the pitfalls that often come with new technology implementations.
Q: What opportunities are next for iQueue for Inpatient Flow as it evolves based on customer needs?
NO: The feedback that came up the most around new opportunities was that customers want even more functionality faster. There’s this real appetite for continued development, continued enhancement of the product, and even deeper reporting. This feedback is really coming from a place of “we love what we have and we can't wait to get more.” Customers are also interested in learning even more patient flow best practices, from both LeanTaaS and their peers.
JH: That’s great feedback that we’re actively listening to as we evolve our product. I’m really excited about the new opportunities we have to integrate iQueue Autopilot, our generative AI solution, into iQueue for Inpatient Flow. This cutting-edge capability will help frontline teams get the insights and answers they need even faster, and make advanced reporting as simple as typing a question into Google. And I’m eagerly anticipating our iQueue for Inpatient Flow User Group Meeting in November. We’ve designed this event to foster a community for inpatient flow leaders where they’ll be able to listen to peers share insights and best practices, and also get a sneak peek at our product roadmap.
To learn more about how health systems are using AI technology to improve patient flow, access free sessions on-demand from the recent Transform Hospital Operations Summit.