Reimagining patient flow: Baptist Health Arkansas' AI strategy improves patient access

At Baptist Health, our mission has always been to deliver high-quality care to the communities we serve throughout Arkansas.

With a network of hospitals and care facilities across the state, we are constantly looking for ways to optimize operations to provide timely and efficient care to our patients. However, managing patient flow and resources across such a vast system presents significant challenges. Despite our best efforts—including the creation of a centralized operations command center—disparate processes across our facilities were limiting our ability to achieve the level of efficiency we knew was possible.

Our leadership team recognized that to truly improve patient access and care coordination, we needed a new approach. Predictive analytics and AI-driven automation were essential tools in helping us reimagine how we could optimize patient flow, and within just one year, enabled our team to increase access and reduce the GMLOS variance by 34%. With the right data at our fingertips, we knew we could engage hospital leaders and staff in a collaborative effort to enhance operations system-wide.

The catalyst for change

For years, we had been working to standardize operations across our hospitals but faced ongoing challenges in improving patient flow. Each hospital within our system had its own processes for managing discharges, patient progression, and capacity constraints, which led to inefficiencies and hindered our ability to optimize care delivery on a broader scale.

We knew that to achieve system-wide improvements, we needed a solution that could help us unify our operations and shift our decision-making model from reactive to proactive. The goal was to create additional capacity across our facilities by standardizing care progression, discharge management, and capacity protocols. This would allow our command center to better manage patient access and flow across the entire health system.

A data-driven approach to reimagining patient flow

We partnered with AI software and services company LeanTaaS to adopt a data-driven and AI-powered approach that leveraged advanced analytics to inform decision-making at every level. Upon implementing LeanTaaS’ iQueue for Inpatient Flow solution, we were able to identify key areas of opportunity and address them in a strategic, sequential manner. Our focus was on three primary areas:

1. Care Progression: Improving how we manage the length of stay for patients was a top priority. Inconsistent processes and the underutilization of Estimated Discharge Date (EDD) data created unnecessary delays. By using predictive insights to forecast discharge dates and better plan care transitions, we were able to standardize care progression and ensure patients moved through the system more efficiently. AI-powered tools like escalation alerts and patient readiness indicators supported these improvements.
2. Discharge Management: Our discharge processes needed alignment across teams. Manual processes and inconsistent communication between departments led to delays in patient discharges, and over half of our discharges lacked formal documentation. With predictive data at hand, we were able drive daily alignment on our patient discharge practices across teams to improve discharge velocity. We now look to our real-time dashboards configured for each team to proactively head off issues and use automated escalations to identify priority discharges.
3. Capacity Protocols: Addressing bottlenecks in critical areas like the emergency department and our post-anesthesia care unit (PACU) required real-time visibility into bed availability and patient status. By standardizing capacity protocols across our hospitals, we were able to reduce transfer declines and improve overall bed utilization. With AI, we now look to automated capacity alerts to reduce patient flow constraints, and our customized metric monitors provide data-driven status updates needed to make crucial decisions.

A year of transformation

Within the first year of implementing these changes, the impact was striking. By standardizing our processes and relying on data-driven insights, we achieved several meaningful results:

• Opportunity days decreased by 25%: Through better care coordination and discharge management, we minimized delays that had previously extended patient stays unnecessarily.
• GMLOS variance reduced by 34%: Our efforts to improve care progression helped us reduce the variance in Geometric Mean Length of Stay (GMLOS), ensuring more predictable and efficient care delivery.

With new predictive insights, our team is able to make data-driven decisions in real-time, removing emotional biases and creating a more robust, strategic approach to hospital operations. Within the first year we experienced encouraging advances within our patient flow and transfer management processes:

• Discharge processing time reduced by 32%
• Discharge orders before 11am increased by 11%
• Discharge orders before 2pm increased by 14%

These improvements weren’t just about numbers—they translated directly into better patient care. Shorter stays meant we could free up beds more quickly, and efficient discharges meant patients could return home sooner. Ultimately, these operational gains allowed us to better serve the people who depend on us, and at the same time, improve our bottom line.

Changing the way we work

The cultural shift that accompanied these operational changes has been just as important as the improvements themselves. By embedding predictive data into our daily decision-making, we’ve fostered a culture of proactive planning. Our conversations have shifted from dwelling on the past and what went wrong to proactively shaping the future and making real-time adjustments to prevent issues before they arise.

This new way of working has enabled greater collaboration across our facilities. Leadership, department managers and frontline staff now work together with a shared understanding of patient flow priorities and system-wide goals. With data transparency, everyone is empowered to make informed decisions that contribute to the overall success of our health system.

Looking ahead

While we’ve made significant strides, we know there is still more to do. We are continuing to explore ways to enhance our operations, particularly in managing complex patient cases and optimizing our discharge lounges. Additionally, we are laying the groundwork for a more sophisticated approach to using predictive analytics that align nursing resources with patient demand.

Our journey to optimize patient flow and operational efficiency has been a transformative one, but it’s just the beginning. We look forward to building on these successes and continuing to provide the best possible care for our patients.

I’ll be doing a deep dive on how Baptist Health is transforming patient flow during my session at Transform Hospital Operations Virtual Summit on December 11 at 10:45AM CT. You can register for the event here.