PATIENT FLOW CONSULTING
Improve Your Organization’s Patient Flow
As many hospitals struggle with under-capacity and over-utilization of service, optimizing patient flow has become imperative. Many factors impact patient flow from accurate assessment of the patients’ level of care needs, to the availability of beds, equipment and staff. Numerous transitions and hand-offs between departments and staff impact patient care and service satisfaction.
Novia Strategies consultants are highly expert and credible consultants in Patient Flow Consulting. Our consultants analyze and present data so that information can be used to understand changes needed and get necessary buy in. We provide methodology to engage staff and managers in partnering with senior leadership to resolve problems, improve operations and drive costs out while ensuring Patient Flow outcomes are being met. We pride ourselves on ensuring the gains are sustained by our consultants transferring knowledge and leaving you with an operational dashboard to monitor the essential elements of Patient Flow.
BENEFITS OF OUR PATIENT FLOW CONSULTING SERVICES:
We will work with you to develop and implement strategies that result in:
- Decreased admission delays
- Decreased ED LOS
- Improved revenue
- Match bed and staff availability with demand
- Minimize variation
- Match staff competency with patient needs
- Enhanced regulatory compliance
- Increased patient satisfaction
- Decreased patient inter and intradepartmental transfers
- Improved communication between departments and staff concerning patient care
OUR APPROACH – PATIENT FLOW CONSULTING SERVICES:
We utilize a four step process in our consulting which is tailored to the level of support you need. These four steps typically are as follows:
- Evaluate your entire patient flow process and system or specific areas identified and make recommendations for improvement
- Develop an action plan to guide the improvement work for either your team or a combined hospital-consultant team
- Provide project leadership or hands-on support for implementation as needed
- Provide an operations dashboard and training that allows the organization to monitor progress and ensure the gains are maintained
Assessment Planning and Implementation
Phase One – Assessment: Optional areas of focus during our Assessment:
- Inpatient and outpatient admission process (all points of entry)
- Emergency Department
- ED Fast Track/Urgent Care
- Outpatient admission process
- Inter and intradepartmental transfers and hand-offs
- “Overflow” and “Holding” area management
- Unit admission criteria
- Physician placement requests
- Accurate determination of levels of care
- Case management systems and processes
- Outpatient services and impact on patient flow
- Utilization and discharge planning processes
- Capacity and demand of peak volume periods and services required
- Patient aggregation
- Unit admission criteria
- Bed management
- Supply and equipment management
- Model of care effectiveness
- Accommodation codes
Phase Two – Key Components of our detailed Action Plan:
- What work needs to be completed to get the improvements targeted
- Who is on point for each activity/outcome
- Identification of key considerations for success
- By when should work occur with attention paid to both prioritization and sequencing
Phase Three – Implementation Optional Support Available:
- Strategic leadership to assist in positioning and managing barriers
- Project leadership to drive the work to completion
- Patient Flow Subject Matter Expert support:
- to provide insight into best practice
- to share various approach options and lessons learned from other project experiences
- to provide objectivity
- to challenge the status quo
- Staff support to do the work in organizations where resources are
Contact Us to learn more about our Patient Flow Consulting Services.
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