The Science of Patient Flow is the study of how patients move into, through, and out of your health system.
4.3 MILLION DAYS ANNUALLY | 2 MILLION PATIENTS EACH YEAR |
37 THOUSAND DEATHS | 3 OPEN BEDS |
Winning the Waiting Game
How can we win the waiting game? It all starts with something called "The Science of Patient Flow." In the simplest form Patient Flow is about getting the right care, in the right place at the right time so that the patient has the best outcome possible.
Access
Refers to when a patient is initially entering a hospital for care. These entry points include patients arriving through the Emergency Department, Procedural Areas, as well as patients that present as Direct Admits or External Transfers from other facilities. Ensuring that patients can seamlessly access the hospital is crucial to ensuring that these patients get the care they need as quickly and safely as possible.
What you can do:
Register patients quickly and accurately to ensure billing is correct and patient care isn't delayed.
Use TeleTracking to view bed request activity to help aid in the registration process.
Throughput
Refers to the patient care journey while they are in hospital. This includes patient movement to tests and procedures, as well as transferring to new units as their level of care needs change.
What you can do:
As patients transfer to new beds, ensure that the transaction is happening in the ADT system in a timely manner. This ensures that the hospital census is accurate for patient placement to view.
If completing a discharge readmission to the same bed be sure to follow proper designed workflow related to blocking the location.
Discharge
Refers to all the preparation and planning that goes into ultimately being able to discharge the patient from the hospital. This is crucial to effective patient flow as it helps stabilize the hospitals capacity and allows for new patients to access the hospital that require care.
What you can do:
While admitting is not responsible for discharging patients, the discharge from the ADT system helps keep the bedboard accurate.
If billing changes need to occur for discharged patients it is important to use the ADT Intercept functionality to prevent any current patients from accidentally being discharged.