Processing Time Analysis Report
The Processing Time Analysis (PTA) Report is an important standard report providing bed request metrics. The PTA report presents information about all the time intervals in the bed request process. Examples of metrics include how quickly Patient Placement assigns beds as well as how quickly requesting areas move patients once a bed assignment has been provided. There are many data points captured in the PTA report and each department/unit will focus on different metrics to monitor compliance and efficiencies.
The following are the key metrics to monitor by area:
Best Practice Metrics Captured In PTA Report
Department/Unit | Metric | Best Practice Goal |
ED | Total Timer | < 120 Minutes |
Procedural Areas | Clean & RTM-OCCP (AKA - Occupied Timer) | < 30 Minutes |
Inpatient Units | Clean & RTM-OCCP (AKA - Occupied Timer) | < 30 Minutes |
Patient Placement | RTM-ASSN | < 15 Minutes |
Generating The PTA Report
Database - Where Your Facility's Data Is Stored
Production - Data that is stored in the production database (this is your current data).
Use when live up-to-the-minute data is needed.
Contains the data from the current time and for the past number of days as defined in Archive Management. This is typically 7 days but may range between 1 and 30 days. If you do not know the number of days, your TeleTracking System Administrator should be able to assist.
Archive - Data that is stored in the archive database (this is your older data).
Does not capture data for the current day.
Users can access reports as far back as the go-live date.
Campus
Defaults to your campus. The only exception is if you have access to multiple campuses.
Group By
Group By allows you to choose how you want the report info sorted. Click on the magnifying glass to choose which specific units to capture.
Origin Unit (most common) is what you would select when you want to run metrics for bed requests leaving a specific unit. Ex: Origin Unit of ED will give you results for all patients from the ED.
Occupied Unit is what you would select if you want to run metrics for bed requests going to a specific unit.
Other Group By Options: Admit Source, Admit Type, Admitting Physician, Attending Physician, Hospital Service, Occupied Unit Discipline, or Patient Type.
Patient Display Field
Choose how the patient’s identification is displayed in the report. You can choose from Name, Visit Number, or MRN.
Date & Time
Request Date Time
Click on the Calendar Icon to select the needed dates.
The system defaults to the entire day however, you may want to isolate specific shifts if you are trying to investigate issues with not meeting metrics.
Time Periods
Choose up to 10 different time periods to run the reports.
Note: If you choose a different number of periods, be sure to adjust the times.
Standard Deviation
Including standard deviation can be helpful if you want to see variations in averages. Most leave this set to ‘Yes’.
Include Special Placements
You can choose to include/exclude certain placements. Leaving defaults will include all records and can identify where the process may not have been followed.
Conflicts - the assigned bed is different from the occupied bed.
Exceptions - placements that were never activated/requested.
Pre-Assigned - the time that the bed was assigned is earlier than the requested time.
Unassigned - Placements where no bed is assigned.
Normal - any record that is not a conflict, exception, pre-assigned, or unassigned. We aim for all records to be normal.
Note:
When viewing the report, special placements are highlighted in the above colors for easy identification.
The report will give a tally of how many times each special placement occurred.
Include Placement Types
Choose to Include or Exclude Pre Admit or In-House Transfer Records.
Note:
ED focuses on Pre Admits.
Procedural Areas can get both Pre Admits and Transfers.
Inpatient Areas focus on Transfers.
Include Target Summary
Target Summary allows you to see the percentage and number of NORMAL records that are meeting the following goal metrics.
Request to Assign
Clean to Occupied
Request to Occupied
You can set specific goal metrics/benchmarks in the field below.
Note: The default settings are based on best practice.
Use this area to exclude outlier placements that exceed a certain time in the field below.
Note:
This is useful if you have a high metric that would skew overall averages.
If you set your maximums too low, you run the risk of excluding a high number of records.
Sort By
Choose if the data is sorted by Request Date/Time or Patient Name.
Protected Health Information (PHI)
You can choose to display or omit patient PHI in the report.
Output
Choose the format of the report data. Options include Adobe, Excel, and Excel Unformatted.
Run Report
Click Run Report once all fields are populated.
Note: This report contains a lot of data. If you are running for a large date range, it might take a little longer to run.
Analyzing The PTA Report
The above is an example of a generated PTA report. We will now break down the information to help you better understand how to read the data.
Assn Bed - The final bed assigned to the patient.
Origin Bed - The bed the patient was in at the time of the bed request.
Occpd Bed - The new bed the patient occupied.
Patient Name - The patient identifier will be displayed in this field. If you opt not to include PHI, a line will appear.
Creation Date - Time the ADT registration occurred for this visit.
Req. Date Time - Date and Time of the bed request activation. This is the starting point for all placement metrics.
Assn Time - Time of day that the patient’s bed was assigned.
RTM Time - Time of day the sending unit activated the Ready to Move timer.
Clean Time - Time of day bed was cleaned. If this time is the same as the assigned time it means that a clean bed was initially assigned.
Occpd Time - The time the patient occupied their new bed. This timer stops either by a transport job being completed, the ADT admission being completed, or by RTLS if applicable.
Req-RTM - Time elapsed from request until the RTM timer is activated.
Req-Assn - Time elapsed from request until a bed assignment is given.
RTM-Assn - Time elapsed from the RTM activation until a bed is assigned.
Assn-RTM - Time elapsed from bed assigned to RTM activation. If the column is blank, RTM was before the bed assignment.
Assn-Clean - If the assigned bed was not clean, this metric shows the time it took that assigned bed to become clean.
Assn-Occpd - Time elapsed from the bed being assigned to the bed being occupied by the patient.
RTM-Occpd - Time elapsed from RTM activation to patient occupying the bed.
Clean-Occpd - Time elapsed from the bed being clean to the time the bed is occupied with a patient.
Clean & RTM-Occpd - Time elapsed for the ‘ready’ patient to occupy ‘ready’ bed. This is considered the Occupied Timer. This timer only starts when the RTM timer is set, and the patient has been given a clean bed assignment.
Total Time - Time elapsed from the activation of the request to the bed being occupied by a patient. This is also called Hold Time.
Displays the percentage numbers of the types of bed requests. It is ideal to be as close to 100% for normal records as possible.
This area displays the percentage of how often you are meeting the metrics goals that you selected within your report parameters.
This area shows you the averages of all the records for the individual time periods and the units that you have selected. At the very bottom of the report, you will find an overall summary that includes metrics for ALL units combined.