Patient Flow
Improving Patient FlowFlow is the smooth and timely transition of patients through the healthcare system and is often defined as the “patient’s experience”. It is departmental silos that create gaps in these care processes and there can be many silos within each department. Poor patient flow has consequences including ED overcrowding and ambulance divert, high rates of LWBS, staff and patient dissatisfaction, compromised safety net, lost revenue and less than optimal clinical outcomes.
Demand and capacity management is the operational approach to mitigating bottlenecks in the system that create waits and delays. Delays in care cause queues; wait times grow when the current demand for services is greater than the current capacity to provide the services. The “Key” is to bring the silos together, close the gaps in care and smooth out the transitions within and between departments and units.
To us it is…The right resources, in the right location, at the right time to ensure the best right outcomes. This is based upon synchronizing service availability with demand, to manage workload and coordinating ancillary services with clinical care.
Workload drives patient flow. Understanding the factors that stress systems is essential to identifying, measuring, and mitigating demand loads that impact workload by creating a capacity related mismatch in resources. A system used to manage the relationship between demand and capacity is called a Demand to Capacity Management System (DCMS). The Joint Commission suggests that a DCMS can be used as a tool to assess track and improve patient flow 1. Vistaar Healthcare Solutions has developed a demand and capacity management system called ACOMS that is delivered as a complete business solution, including software, consulting and implementation services and support.
Our technology solution ACOMS™ automates operations across the enterprise coordinating departments, functions, processes, assets and systems. ACOMS™ mitigates risk by minimizing waits and delays. It focuses on the importance of identifying and mitigating impediments to efficient patient flow across the healthcare continuum. Using a common language to communicate, it creates visibility and transparency between all units to real-time and potential levels of stress and demand/capacity mismatches. These “events” trigger the organization’s defined “institutional memory”; actions that facilitate staff empowering to respond consistently and effectively, using standardized best practices.
