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As hospitals continue to battle healthcare workforce shortages and high employee turnover, capacity is a major pain point. Hospitals cannot keep beds and operating rooms open to meet patient care needs unless they are adequately staffed.
When it comes to technology to help facilitate capacity management, hospital leaders are looking for solutions that automatically identify and prioritize patients who are ready to be discharged using real-time data, according to Addis. Report From a healthcare software company Hospital IQ.
The company partnered with independent research firm Sage Growth Partners for the report, which included qualitative interviews and collected responses from 111 hospital and health system leaders. The leaders include CEOs, COOs, Chief Medical Officers, Chief Nursing Officers, Chief Operating Officers and Chief Medical Information Officers.
The research suggests that health system leaders’ priorities over the next several years will be to increase surgical volume, optimize operating room utilization, reduce the average length of stay for patients and streamline the discharge process.
But managing capacity — both for inpatient beds and operating rooms — can be difficult for hospitals. It requires them to quickly balance already-burnt staff and calculate multiple variables, including bed availability, staffing needs and patient flow.
Hospitals often turn to technology to address the complexity of the problem, but still face challenges in harnessing data, the report says. In fact, 73% of executives believe that data reporting needs to be improved to support day-to-day operational decisions.
Many hospitals rely on EHRs to help with capacity management because they have invested so heavily in that technology, but EHRs don’t always use real-time data, the report says.
Technology platforms must work on real-time data to generate fast and accurate insights into capacity management. But the report shows that hospitals’ use of real-time data to support day-to-day operations is still low – only 39% of organizations rely on it.
The report indicated that hospital leaders think their organizations could do more to use bed and operating room time more efficiently. For example, less than half of leaders on the surgical side say their organization’s perioperative patient flow management is good. And only 8% are extremely satisfied with their organization’s current operating room utilization levels.
Hospital leaders agree that technology is needed to solve capacity management problems. They said they are looking for solutions to accurately predict demand, automate workflows and streamline the flow process.
Without efficient capacity management and optimized resource utilization, hospitals will struggle to meet patient care needs. This means that patients will return elsewhere. This is less than ideal, with 92% of the leaders surveyed saying they consider their market competitive. At a time when hospital finances are incredibly tight, most organizations are not in a position to lose revenue by turning away patients.
Photo: tonefotografia, Getty Images
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