Patient Flow Software Blog

A recent study of hospital CEOs¹ showed that financial challenges remain their biggest concern. Much of the concern relates to continuing systemic changes resulting from healthcare reform.
The financial benefits derived by the significant increase in insurance coverage of previously uninsured patients is potentially offset by reduced government payment levels under Medicare and Medicaid, pressures to move toward a value-based care model, and collection issues resulting from high deductible insurance plans.
These changing currents emphasize the essential need for hospitals to continually improve the efficiency of their operations. One increasingly important area of operations is the emergency department because of its growing role as the primary entry portal for inpatient treatment, the main source of revenue for most hospitals.
A RAND Corporation study² found that the combined effects of steady growth of ED visits and fewer inpatient beds have caused: 

What Are They and How Can You Navigate Them?

Is setting standards and measuring your patient placement performance a top priority? If you

work in hospital administration, we bet (and hope!) your answer is a confident “Yes.”

As you know, the goal for efficient patient placement is to reduce or eliminate delays in transferring patients from clinical intake areas, such as the ED and PACU, to nursing unit beds, thus improving medical care (by avoiding extended stays in the ED beds or in the hall in a nursing unit) for the patients and freeing up needed beds in the ED.

But there are challenges that have to be overcome in order to meet this goal. First, there must be easy access to real-time operating data about patients and beds for clinical and bed access staffs throughout the process. Second, management must make decisions as to how to handle several difficult issues that arise during the process, and those decisions are better made with real-time data. And third, management must also find a way to accurately measure the performance of clinical and bed access staffs in completing their segments of the process.

The Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, is a law that, according to the Department of Health and Human Services: “Puts consumers back in charge of their health care… [and] gives the American people the stability and flexibility they need to make informed choices about their health.” Media coverage concerning the ACA has been focused on the effects for consumers, or patients. But, what about hospitals? How will the ACA effect health care providers?
The vision of Bernard Tyson, president and CEO of the Kaiser Permanente Health System, may help shed some light on these questions. According to Tyson, the current goal of health care providers, given the Affordable Care Act, is:

Are You Meeting or Missing the Mark?

Perhaps because we call them “patients,” we often forget that patients are also consumers, and the decision-making process applies to hospitals just as it applies to hotels, restaurants, and retail providers. Questions like “Where to get treatment?” “Which doctor to trust?” and “What hospital to support?” are increasingly determined by what other patients & consumers have to say.

Now, according to research provided by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, there is no denying that hospitals are influenced by the growing popularity of online ratings and reviews.

Healthcare Business Tech weighed in on this fairly recent trend, stating, “With the rise of the Internet and social media, today’s customers are more savvy with all their purchases-and have higher expectations. Health care is no different.”

So, what does a review-savvy patient mean for our readers in the healthcare industry? It means that the patient experience, from the moment they walk up to the front desk to the moment they exit the hospital, is now, more than ever, a vital part of your hospital’s success and survival. Having tools in place to create a smooth, efficient patient experience could be the difference between a poor or a positive rating.

A PFS original interview with Peter Van de Kerkhove, one of the industry’s leading innovators

Peter Van de Kerkhove is a man with a mission. A mission to provide hospitals with astandardized approach for coordinating and managing Patient Transport activities, using technology.

In fact, he’s had this mission for over 25 years, beginning with his job as a Project Manager for Process Improvement, working for a 900-bed medical center, in the Department of Operations (workflow) Analysis. It was in this position that Peter discovered he had a passion for Patient Transport and made it his personal mission to see it improved.

Today, he is seeing that mission realized as over 50 hospitals have benefited from his innovative breakthrough in transport technology, including those served by PFS, as he is one of our co-founders and a continued consultant.