Patient Flow Software Blog

Ron Gregg

Recent Posts

HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOUR PATIENT TRANSPORT OPERATIONS ARE DOING WELL? Part 2

Posted by Ron Gregg on Tue, Sep 18, 2018 @ 02:51 PM

 

PART 2 – THE POWER OF BENCHMARKING

In Part 1, we stated that the best thing patient transport technology can do is to demonstrate that your transport operations are performing as well as can be expected. However, sometimes the numbers show unexpected, but important, results. Here is an example.   

Transport managers are interested in comparing their actual performance against some reasonable performance standard, what ARE we doing compared to what SHOULD we be doing? 

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Topics: patient transportation software, patient flow software, patient tracking, Patient transport software

HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOUR PATIENT TRANSPORT OPERATIONS ARE DOING WELL?

Posted by Ron Gregg on Fri, Oct 20, 2017 @ 06:40 PM

 

One easy way to know if your patient transportation operations are functioning correctly is if you are not receiving any complaints from the customers. However, zero complaints may never have happened in any hospital anywhere.

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Topics: patient transportation software, patient flow software, patient tracking, Patient transport software

Managing | Patient Flow | from the Emergency Department

Posted by Ron Gregg on Thu, Apr 30, 2015 @ 01:55 PM

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: 

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Topics: patient transportation software, patient flow software, patient satisfaction, bed management, patient placement

Challenges in Achieving Efficient Patient Placement

Posted by Ron Gregg on Mon, Jul 28, 2014 @ 07:14 PM

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.

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Topics: patient flow, patient placement

Patient Flow Technology for Medium Sized Hospitals

Posted by Ron Gregg on Fri, Jul 19, 2013 @ 06:08 PM

Saving You Money & Time, So You Can Save Lives

Patient care is largely about getting people into the hospital to receive treatment and initiate their recovery process so they can continue healing after discharge. Unfortunately, individualized patient work flows are often interrupted, which has the potential to delay treatments, lower clinical staff efficiencies and extend the length of stay. This is costly to hospitals since labor and space are the top two most expensive resources of a hospital’s budget.

But hospitals equipped with technology used for tracking and optimizing patient and equipment transport, as well as managing housekeeping duties that impact bed availability, have the opportunity to reduce a patient’s length of stay, improve the quality of care, reduce the average cost per procedure, increase bed utilization, and improve patient satisfaction. What could this look like for a medium sized hospital? How about a $34,500 savings for every 50 occupied beds? So, for a hospital that has a census of 150 transportable patients*, we are looking at $100,000 annual savings in clinical labor. Continue reading if you’re interested in why getting from Point A to Point B can be so expensive and how Patient Flow Technology helps that journey run much more smoothly (and cheaply).

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Topics: patient flow, patient transportation, patient transportation software, patient flow software, bed management, patient placement, patient tracking

The Necessity of Patient Transport Management Systems

Posted by Ron Gregg on Wed, Jan 30, 2013 @ 10:29 AM

Bringing the Whole Picture Into Focus

One of the current hot topics in literature about improving hospital care and finances is the introduction of comprehensive real-time patient information that can be shared among diagnostic, clinical and support personnel. This information allows hospital personnel to optimize their impact and it is catching the attention of hospital managers. It turns out there are different and complimentary technological approaches to a solution. Let's see how they work. 
Enterprise Visibility

Enterprise patient visibility systems integrate and centralize essential information with at-a-glance accessibility for the entire patient care team. These systems collect information about admissions, discharges and transfers, orders and results of tests, bed statuses, and patient location information from other systems. This helps clinical, diagnostic and support staff to determine how to prioritize their tasks, and to improve patient experience and outcomes. These systems help create measurable improvements in observation times, bed turnover response, patient satisfaction and volumes.
Transport Management Systems and RTLS Systems

Patient tracking information can be supplied by Real-Time Location Systems using a combination of tags and wireless networks to identify a patient's current location in real-time. Unfortunately, they require an infrastructure that many hospitals cannot afford. A more cost-effective solution comes in the form of an automated Patient Transport Management System, which can offer even better patient logistics information in addition to support for the management of patient transportation. That’s what we like to call a “win-win.” 
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Topics: patient flow, patient transportation, patient transportation software, patient tracking

Can Patient Flow Survive Your Placement Process?

Posted by Ron Gregg on Mon, May 14, 2012 @ 03:43 PM

Making Your Emergency Department Admissions Efficient & Predictable

In our first blog post we promised future entries, and we intend to follow through with this promise, beginning with this next post on Emergency Department admissions and patient placement.

Studies show that between 40 and 60 percent of hospital admissions come through the emergency department, with a similar percentage of hospital revenues being generated from those patients. Now, this is the Emergency Department we’re talking about, so it is easy to assume that these admissions are unscheduled and therefore unable to predict. In actuality, the level of ED admissions can be predicted, but many hospitals remain unequipped to process these admissions efficiently, resulting in interrupted patient flow right at the beginning.

We have compiled some issues that have been reported to us relating to ED admissions that cause frustration for both staff and patients.

  • Although the ED has an electronic system to record the admission order, the admitting department only receives a text page, fax, paper printout, or phone call about the admission order. While the admitting staff knows where this patient should go it has limited information as to status and availability of beds resulting in multiple calls with one or more nursing units to update the bed information. That’s a three or four step process, between various departments, for the admission of a single patient.
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Topics: patient flow, patient placement

The Nuts & Bolts of Patient Flow

Posted by Ron Gregg on Mon, Jan 23, 2012 @ 10:19 AM

Welcome to our Blog!                                               

We have worked with hospitals who experience recurring problems with delivering patients to their diagnostic and treatment appointments on time or who find empty beds sitting up on the floor with no environmental service worker scheduled for cleaning. Sometimes the stories remind us of the above picture.  

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Topics: patient flow, patient transportation, bed management