Infusion centers nationwide are struggling with increasing patient volumes, staff burnout, and limited chair capacity. Chicago-based Northwestern Medicine tackled these challenges head-on at its high-volume Galter 17 Infusion Center. By partnering with LeanTaaS to implement iQueue for Infusion Centers and applying a systems-thinking approach, the team achieved substantial gains in access, wait times and staff satisfaction.
In anticipation of his upcoming presentation at Transform Infusion Center Operations Virtual Summit on June 11, we sat down with Bizhan Shahpar, program manager of performance improvement at Northwestern Medicine, to learn how aligning culture, technology and process improvement helped unlock new capacity without adding chairs—and how the organization is continuing to build on that initial success.
Question: How did Northwestern Medicine first begin its infusion optimization journey, and what led to the focus on Galter 17 Infusion Center?
Bizhan Shahpar: Northwestern Medicine first partnered with LeanTaaS in 2020 to bring iQueue for Infusion Centers into our operations as a way to better manage increasing patient volumes and optimize scheduling across multiple sites. At the time, the team needed a smarter, more scalable solution that could balance appointment loads, reduce variability in scheduling, and create a better experience for both patients and staff.
Over four years, this work was expanded to nine sites and 147 chairs across the system. There were strong results early on, including an 11% increase in average daily volume and a 20% reduction in drug wait times. This allowed the team to scale across a range of locations from downtown to our suburban sites. But over time, compliance with the AI-enabled templates began to plateau, especially at Galter 17 Infusion Center, Northwestern’s busiest site. In order to better support staff and patient satisfaction through more efficient scheduling, we needed to go beyond initial implementation and really embed the data-driven templates into the culture and daily workflows. That’s when we took a closer look at Galter 17.
Q: What specific challenges at Galter 17 prompted your team to revisit infusion scheduling operations?
BS: Galter 17 is our busiest infusion center, treating over 100 patients a day. We were seeing major bottlenecks during peak hours, especially between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Patients wanted appointments during that window, and it felt good to accommodate them, but it created long wait times, staff burnout, and an overall inefficient use of our resources. At one point, our template compliance with iQueue had dropped to around 71%, which was a clear signal that the current approach wasn’t sustainable. We realized that improving adherence to the scheduling template was the most direct way to address the root causes of long patient wait times, uneven workload distribution, and staff fatigue. The template is designed to level-load appointments throughout the day, so raising compliance to at least 80% meant we could ease peak-hour congestion, improve the patient experience, and create a more predictable, manageable workflow for staff.
Q: Once you identified the scheduling bottleneck, how did you decide where to focus your improvement efforts?
BS: We knew from experience that access to real-time, reliable data would be the key to moving quickly. One of the metrics that stood out was cycle time—the actual treatment duration compared to what was scheduled. We found that for a large number of treatments in the 60- to 120-minute range, appointments were ending significantly earlier than scheduled. That meant we were holding space unnecessarily and missing opportunities to serve more patients. Working with our pharmacy and operations teams, we recalibrated the scheduled durations for three commonly used drugs. That simple change opened capacity for 67 additional patients per month.
Q: What steps did you take to improve scheduling template compliance across the team?
BS: This was as much a culture shift as it was a scheduling fix. We had to move from a mindset of “let’s give the patient the time they want,” to “let’s schedule in a way that supports both patient and staff experience.” We started by educating the scheduling team. We shared a one-pager explaining what template compliance is, how it’s scored, and why it matters. We also connected the dots for schedulers by showing how their choices directly affected conditions on the floor—whether nurses were overwhelmed or had breathing room, and whether patients waited or were seen promptly. That visibility built excitement. We even gamified the effort by providing a scoring rubric and celebrating improvements in real-time.
Equally important was engaging our operational leaders — the practice manager, operations coordinator, and program director. We established guardrails for weekly audits to proactively monitor template compliance and address overbooking. This helped create a culture of accountability and provided a feedback loop to fix lingering inefficiencies. As compliance went up, nurses noticed the difference: fewer traffic jams, shorter wait times, a calmer environment. That positive feedback reinforced the new behaviors and motivated the team to keep going.
Q: What impact did these changes have on patient experience and day-to-day operations at Galter 17?
BS: The improvements made a real difference, both for patients and staff. By increasing our scheduling template compliance and shifting more appointments into the afternoon, we eased the pressure during peak hours. That helped us flatten what had become a daily traffic jam, reducing overbooking by the equivalent of 2.8 chairs. As a result, patient wait times fell significantly—by 43% overall, with peak-time waits averaging just 12 minutes during our busiest stretch. This created a more predictable, less stressful environment for staff and allowed us to complete 5% more appointments without adding any new chairs initially.
Q: Once you optimized scheduling and saw stronger compliance, how did that inform future capacity planning?
BS: Improving compliance helped us get leaner, but it also revealed where we were approaching our limits. Reaching 93% template utilization triggered a deeper look at our capacity. Since LeanTaaS recommends reassessing when centers approach 90% utilization, we partnered with their team to conduct a custom analysis. At the same time, our program director and lead nurses manually tracked overflow chair usage over a two-week period to establish a baseline of how frequently those chairs were being used, which revealed an average of 6.7 overflow chairs in use per day. This finding further supported the need to explore additional capacity. LeanTaaS then used this data, along with volume trends and operational constraints, to model safe, effective expansion options. Together, we determined that adding three additional templated chairs would alleviate pressure without compromising service. It was a great example of how smart analytics and close collaboration can drive thoughtful, sustainable growth.
Since making that change, wait times have remained stable, and we’re continuing to coordinate with pharmacy and phlebotomy to ensure staffing scales with patient volume.
Q: How are you planning to sustain and spread this success across Northwestern Medicine?
BS: Sustainability was built into the project from day one. We created a detailed playbook that includes the scope, metrics, data guidance, and change management approach. That way, any team—current or new—can pick it up and know exactly how to replicate the work. We’ve already shared it with other infusion leaders, and as other centers approach similar volume thresholds, we’re ready to support them in launching their own improvement efforts. What made this project successful was not just the technology, but the people—from schedulers to nurses to leaders—who aligned around a shared goal of improving patient care.
Don’t miss Bizhan’s upcoming session at Transform Infusion Center Operations Virtual Summit on June 11 titled, “Transforming Oncology Throughput: Data-Driven Gains at Northwestern Medicine with LeanTaaS’ iQueue for Infusion Centers,” to learn more about this important work. Register for the virtual event here.
