Patients arrive at hospitals every day through different paths. Some through the Emergency Department, some through physician referrals, and some through scheduled procedures.
What makes all of these situations similar is the fact that critically ill patients need access to care at the right place and the right time.
Editor's Note: This content was originally posted on TeleTracking's blog.
At the same time, there are challenges when it comes to creating a culture of access. Barriers include organizational silos, lack of continuity across care settings, and a lack of real-time operational visibility. For example, if someone needs acute, immediate care they would typically enter a health system through the ED or via a referral/transfer from another physician or facility, otherwise known as a direct admit. However, sometimes a direct admit isn’t that direct. Sometimes it ends up being fragmented, inefficient and time-consuming. And in some cases, it may take so long that the referring physician sends a patient to a competing health system. The result of these delays is lost revenue, a negative impact to a health system’s reputation, and a weakening of community physician ties. Another unfortunate scenario that can unfold when a health system can’t accommodate a direct admit is that patients may end up getting sent to the ED instead. That results in overcrowding and increases in left-without-being-seen.
So what is the answer? How do you give physicians an easy way to not just admit a patient, but also track the patients progress throughout their continuum of care— at no cost to them?
The answer lies in looking to the airline industry. Airlines have air traffic control—a central command center that makes sure takeoffs and arrivals happen without incident. A similar command center model offers great benefits for a health system. Health system command centers have been proven to lead to big jumps in the number of patients who can access care at a health system—as well as corresponding jumps in patient satisfaction, revenue, growth and market share.
See the full article here and learn how to get more information.