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.
From a patient transport standpoint, it can seem like everyone wants their patients right now, or at least prior to them being taken anywhere else. Some departments want to submit all their transport requests at one time early in the day. Some nursing units are too busy to get their patients ready for transport, and clinical units often want the same patient at the same time.
Some of these situations require innovative management responses, and some are pretty much unmanageable. Customer complaints are bound to follow.
Technological support can help with the management of your patient transport system. It can prevent the scheduling of overlapping trip requests and it can help identify points in the transport process where delays are occurring so they can be addressed. It can also help with rescheduling transports among ancillary departments to prevent back-and-forth transports.
However, perhaps the best thing patient transport technology can do is to demonstrate that your transport operations are performing as well as can be expected. Some hospital administors are satisfied if their numbers compare favorably with national averages. But, it may be the case that the size and configuration of their hospital are such that they should easily beat national averages, or it may be that the hospital will never be able to meet the average.
Rather than try to meet unrealistic standards, it’s better to set a benchmark that takes into account your hospital size, configuration, and transport needs. Internal benchmarks can be established which will define a standard trip duration for every transport request. That value then defines a standard beginning and ending time for each transport. This allows you to determine if transport requests are being dispatched on time, whether they are arriving on time, and which transporters are performing up to standard. Then you will truly know how well you are doing, and whether the trips/hour/transporter you are producing meets an acceptable standard for your hospital.
Technology may not eliminate customer complaints, but it will sure help in measuring your patient transport abilities and pinpoint where improvements can be made.
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