Patient Flow Software Blog

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.

A True Life Look at Patient Flow Challenges

When the transporter arrived to take Jo Anne’s mother down to X-Ray, she hardly expected him to bring a stretcher, deposit it in front of the elderly woman’s bed and request that she get out of bed and onto the stretcher by herself. There are reasons some patients wear “fall risk” precautionary wristbands and if Jo Anne had not been there to assist her mom onto the stretcher, that precaution could have become a reality.

Unfortunately, this was just the beginning of Jo Anne’s troubles with the patient transport process. When Jo Anne’s mother was brought back to her room on a stretcher, the 2 transporters proceeded to park it outside of her door and she was given the instructions to go ahead and “get back to bed.” Frustrated, Jo Anne asked an administrator, who was making PR rounds, if she could speak with someone from the transport department, but no one ever showed up. Now, anyone even slightly familiar with hospital protocol or the basics of patient transportation will realize that this is not ideal, or even acceptable, transporter behavior.

Comparing Where You Are to Where You Want to Be

Benchmarking - Inpatient transportation managers have a high level of interest in comparing their performance metrics to others to determine how they are doing.