Share your capacity data
In the wake of the global pandemic, a lot of hospitals were working at full capacity, many couldn’t find beds to get the right care. It was a nightmare – we were all trying our best to make sure that resources and help were sent to the ones in need.
This made one thing very clear. Hospitals need to share their capacity data so that patients can arrive and get admitted to a place with sufficient capacity.
Reduce wait time
When the number of patients exceeds the available human resources, wait time increases and patient satisfaction drops.
The key is to understand your operating capacities, and accordingly manage tasks effectively. Most hospitals continue to rely on old queue management methods that can’t keep up with the growing number of patients.
In this situation, a digital system would be extremely beneficial because it adapts to various types of healthcare settings, from public hospitals to private clinics. It enables real-time planning and management of patient encounters.
Measure and analyze data
This process can be made much easier with a contemporary patient management system. The system collects patient data through every visit for every patient. It can summarize all this information into comprehensive reports.
This helps us figure out where bottlenecks occur and why they occur. As a result, informed staffing and scheduling decisions can be made in the future, resulting in improved patient flow.
Facilitate communication between departments
The patient flow will be optimised with your patients in mind if you establish a common reporting system between your department heads.
Care is provided from one department to the next, as it is in many healthcare facilities. This could include information from radiology, surgery, pharmacy, and other fields. As a patient moves from one department to the next, it’s critical that all activities are documented.
Mobile technology for the running staff
The hospital staff is always on their feet. You can see nurses, doctors, housekeeping, caretakers, managers, just rushing in and out from one room to another, one patient to another.
A static old screen connected to a desktop is a bit old fashioned and unfeasible for them, isn’t it?
Empower your staff by adopting mobile technology, helping them feed data and access information on the go.
Have a plan ready for full capacity
Despite all your planning, there will be times when the hospital is out of capacity. We all witnessed this happening during the global pandemic.
In such cases, the hospital normally requests that each regular inpatient unit increase its patient complement by one to two patients. Depending on availability, these patients are put in corridors, solaria, conference rooms, or other available spaces. It’s important to note that the decision is between a corridor in the emergency department and a hallway on a floor, not between a room and a hallway.
Managing patient flow across the hospital or hospital network necessitates an enterprise-wide view. However, that is largely lacking today. Care teams lack broader situational awareness beyond their unit or department because clinical and operational data is distributed across multiple systems. Patient prioritising can be hampered by a lack of readily available and usable information, which can hinder patient transitions and cause unanticipated bottlenecks in patient flow.[/ohio_text]