An innovative, strategic approach to healthcare capacity and workforce management is more critical now than ever.
With financial burdens and staffing shortages, health systems must remove these significant barriers from their path to profitability. Over 1,200 hospitals and centers have found a winning strategy by uniting AI-powered software, workflow integration, and change management services.
This “magic equation” will be on full display at an upcoming event at Becker’s 14th Annual Meeting in Chicago, where healthcare leaders will showcase the impact of AI and change management on efficiency, profitability, and growth.
The latest LeanTaaS Transform event highlights “The Path to Profitability”
On Tuesday, April 9, LeanTaaS will host a half-day event, one of the company’s signature Transform conferences, onsite at the Annual Meeting. Hundreds of attendees will gather together, discussing AI-powered solutions that break barriers and transform operations, including resource allocation, efficiency, and capacity management. Generative AI will be omnipresent throughout the event, as this latest innovation can help hospitals leapfrog older technology and transform the way that staff work.
The keynote of this Transform event, led by LeanTaaS founder and CEO Mohan Giridharadas, will discuss creating “The Path to Profitability” by deploying AI-powered capacity and staffing solutions, integrated into existing workflows and brought to life through strategic change management. The session will reveal how 185+ health systems are reaping ROI from AI, including performing 2-4 more cases per OR per month and earning an extra $10k per inpatient bed annually. Across these organizations, AI-based scheduling optimization reduces delays by 80%. To relieve staff burnout, automation eliminates 500,000 hours of repetitive tasks while machine learning accurately matches staff assignments to upcoming demand for them. Overall, optimizing resources and staff this way can increase EBITDA by 5 percentage points, a financial shift that for many health systems means the difference between survival and success.
To discuss how health systems can scale their AI-driven solutions throughout their organizations for system-wide transformation, a thought leadership panel presented by Neal Patel, MD, MPH (Chief Information Officer, Vanderbilt University Medical Center) and Ashley Walsh, MHA (Senior Vice President, Client Services, LeanTaaS) will follow. Further sessions will dive deeper into solutions that impact perioperative services, infusion care, and inpatient flow.
Using AI technology and change management to optimize OR case volume and staffing
A major financial engine of the hospital, the OR has potential to generate high revenue as well as costs. CommonSpirit and Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) will each present case studies on accommodating their growing, unpredictable demand for surgical services with a constrained supply of resources that are complex to optimize. This is key to increasing revenue and reducing costs, as well as delivering consistent, timely surgical care.
CommonSpirit leaders will discuss the key roles of systemwide change management and effective governance in transformation and financial outcomes. Dana Ringer (System VP Financial Strategy) and Brian Dawson, MSN, RN-BC, CNOR, CSSM (System VP of Perioperative Services) will share how integrating AI, talented experts, and strategic insights into perioperative operations empowers organizations to grow surgical volume and achieve key goals. In July through December of 2023, CommonSpirit ORs performed an additional 13,561 cases, and the system achieved a $45 million ROI.
To help optimize one of the most precious and complex resources in the OR – staff – OHSU’s Dio Sumagaysay, RN, MS (VP of Perioperative & Multi-specialty Procedural Services) will present on how strategic staffing insights and automated workflows support efficient and effective planning and practices. This session will offer actionable strategies to improve resource allocation and empower nurse leaders to navigate the future of OR staffing with confidence and foresight. It will also show how OHSU’s frontline scheduling staff eliminated duplicative manual tasks and enjoyed streamlined workflows as they optimized the use of ORs.
Driving efficient infusion care delivery through organizational transformation
The delivery of one infusion treatment to one patient entails the synchronization of many resources, including available chairs, nurses, drugs, and equipment, along with linking patient’s infusion appointments with needed labs and provider visits. Infusion centers are often challenged to coordinate these resources to ensure all are fully utilized to accommodate patient volumes, that appointments begin as scheduled and nurses and staff have smooth, manageable workdays.
In a joint session that compares efficiently run infusion centers to “symphonies”, New York-Presbyterian Columbia University Irving Medical Center’s Justin Ngai, MSN, RN-BC, NE-BC (Operations Manager, Adult Infusion Centers) and New York-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center’s Celsus Auguiste, MSN, RN (Patient Care Director) will discuss the innovative infusion management paradigm they created to optimize their centers’ ability to deliver care.
This initiative involved forming a cohesive, multidisciplinary operations team that merges clinical and administrative expertise to address complex infusion challenges like scheduling, as well as implementing predictive AI software solutions to support strong communication and alignment, ensuring a seamless transition from strategic planning to frontline execution. Together, the infusion centers achieved a 17.1% reduction in average wait times, a 2.1% increase in patient satisfaction, and 7,750 additional annual appointments.
Achieving systemwide visibility for strategic inpatient flow
To ensure all patients in an inpatient setting receive the right care, in the right place, at the right time, hospitals must have a future-looking view of each patient’s journey as well as the bed and staff resources the patient will likely need. High-powered command centers are essential to achieving this, and applying AI and advanced analytics to these critical resources helps both health system leaders and frontline staff take excellence in inpatient care to the next level.
In a panel featuring three leaders at the forefront of advanced analytics adoption, the presenters will share how they optimized their command centers to enhance systemwide visibility as well as existing processes, thus unlocking hidden capacity and efficiency in the inpatient space. These command centers are equipped with data-driven insights that guide staff’s decision making, as well as predictive capabilities to help foresee operational challenges and mitigate risks. Ultimately they support alignment on the organization’s goals, so all stakeholders can work together toward transformational outcomes.
This panel will include Alicia Vermeulen, MSN, RN, NE-BC, CEN (Director of Patient Placement and Logistics, Avera Transfer Center, Virtual Patient Care, Avera McKennan Hospital & University Health Center), Schiara Gonzalez Parker, MBA, BSN, RN (Senior Director of Patient Flow, Vanderbilt University Medical Center), and Susan Grimwood, MSN, RN (Executive Director, Logistics, Capacity and Patient Throughput, Sarasota Memorial Health Care System).
See more information on the Becker’s Healthcare 14th Annual Meeting.