Improve Patient Flow & Care By Putting Everyone on the Same Page

Improve Patient Flow & Care By Putting Everyone on the Same Page

Football season is the favorite part of the year for many of us. Take a moment to think about the wonders of the football scoreboard. With a quick glance, anyone familiar with the game's fundamentals can come in during the third quarter and instantly be on the same page as everyone else in the stadium.



In healthcare, the football scoreboard's equivalent is the enterprise tracking board. Instead of a tracking board for one department, this emerging technology provides patient visibility across the hospital or a multi-hospital enterprise.



Enterprise visibility solutions and tracking boards use visual controls to broadcast real-time, at-a-glance information about patient status against the hospital's floor plan. An enterprise tracking board addresses organizational challenges from multiple C-Suite perspectives:



• The CEO, COO and CFO's Perspective
When deciding whether to approve a new technology investment, CEOs, COOs and CFOs want solutions to the issues that keep them up at night, such as patient flow and bed turnaround. An enterprise tracking board can help speed bed turnarounds by up to 20 minutes so patients can be placed in the right bed more quickly.



The plight of hospitals experiencing ED overcrowding has been making headlines for years, but the real cause of ED challenges is usually "downstream" capacity issues in areas such as the ICU and surgery. Giving the people who make care decisions visibility into what's going on in the ED as well as the rest of the hospital is critical to understanding where bottlenecks occur and fixing them. An enterprise tracking board also helps prevent diversions by speeding bed turnarounds by up to 20 minutes so patients can be placed in the right bed more quickly.



• The CNO's Perspective
CNOs want their managers to be able to walk onto a unit and immediately know what's happening, where any special patient populations are and who might need help. An enterprise tracking board helps make nurses' lives easier by saving them up to one hour per shift per day, by eliminating up to 7-10 phone calls and 3-4 wasted logins.



• The CIO's Perspective
CIOs are under constant pressure to maximize adoption of existing technology and ensure that incremental investments provide a quantifiable ROI. Enterprise tracking boards typically return a full ROI in less than 2 years based on uncovering 5-10 "hidden" beds per day.



• Patient flow is an urgent, costly challenge that is addressed most effectively with an enterprise tracking board. But the solid ROI provided by uncovering hidden beds and uncorking bottlenecks is just the beginning.

Imagine how you could enhance revenue, care continuity and patient satisfaction by alerting central supply, financial counselors, outpatient treatment centers and other stakeholders of all pending discharges?



• Knowing the "score" every minute for every patient across your enterprise gives your organization the chance not only to achieve its clinical and patient flow "goals" but to change the game entirely.



• Learn more about enterprise tracking boards and solutions designed to enhance patient flow, including Horizon Enterprise Visibility™ by McKesson, by reading the complete version of this article



This article was written by Billie Whitehurst, BC, RN, MS, vice president and chief nursing officer for McKesson.



About the Author
Billie Whitehurst, BC, RN, MS, vice president and chief nursing officer for McKesson