Effective management of patient flow can improve performance of a healthcare organization in many ways, these include:
- Improved personnel satisfaction and ability to recruit high quality staff who suffer less stress from being overloaded with high patient to staff (nursing, clerical, tech, physicians) ratios.
- Improved patient satisfaction due to shorter wait times, more individual attention from staff, fewer complications or patient harm events.
- Increased utilization of fixed cost capacity which allows facilities to handle more volume without having to add beds or space, thus avoiding large capital costs.
- Lower costs / increased revenues, secondary to the avoidance of overtime and agency staff use, avoidance of new capital costs (see above) and improved throughout, which means higher revenues.
- Improved quality by avoiding periods of understaffing and overstressed healthcare providers. This can dramatically lower morbidity and mortality rates.
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