Combining information technology with a management approach known as “lean thinking” may help hospitals improve patient flow management, reduce wait times for hospital beds and save money, according to a new RAND Corporation report.
Researchers found the unified approach resulted in tremendous gains in efficiency over three years at one hospital system, improving the number of adult transfers by more than 300 percent, reducing the time it took patients to move from the emergency room to a hospital bed by more than one-third, and creating a 27% increase in total system admissions.
The study was conducted at Health First, a comprehensive, nonprofit network of four hospitals, a health plan, a medical group, and outpatient services provider in central Florida that wanted to improve quality scores, financial performance and patient satisfaction ratings. The RAND analysis was sponsored by TeleTracking Technologies, the company behind Health First’s innovative operational information technology solution. The study is based off of real data provided to RAND researchers by Health First.
Key success factors in Health First’s positive outcomes were attributed to real-time information that was routinely used by hospital workers to identify bottlenecks and improve performance based on the solutions studied; and continual process improvement, where front-line managers listened to suggestions from associates and created a culture of accountability.
The conclusion reached by the RAND researchers was that the adoption of centralized, data-driven management of regional referrals, inpatient admissions, and bed turnover at Health First streamlined throughput and freed up substantial latent capacity in its network of four hospitals.
Researchers conducted the study by visiting Health First and interviewing key leaders of the health system’s administration. TeleTracking sponsored the study to provide an independent assessment of the effect of its software on efforts to increase hospital efficiency.
The report, “Improving Hospital Efficiency Through Data-Driven Management: A Case Study of Health First, Florida,” is available at http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1342.html.