Healthcare Operational Analytics Software is in demand by integrated delivery systems that serve over one thousand direct hospitalizations through their physician offices, and handle thousands of inpatient and outpatient visitors annually. They report a significant reduction in patient admission times and achievement of top-tier rankings for patient experience and the speed of the admission process. What strategies do these companies implement to tackle sustainable results?
Healthcare organizations analyze the hospital admission process from the patient’s point of view and can identify why wait times are prolonged. Waiting for the receptionist to process admission paperwork and assign a bed can be physically and emotionally taxing for the patient. Delays create repetitive stress and frustration for all members involved.
Also, low patient satisfaction negatively affects the amount of reimbursement the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) calculates for hospitals.
If organizations redesign the inpatient admissions process, they could advance the quality of care for patients and their families, improve handoffs and communication across all stages and levels of the process, and lower stress and frustration for medical personnel.
Stakeholders need targeted process improvement methodologies to identify weak links, such as redundant data collection and inconsistent processes that may cause patients to wait too long to be admitted to the hospital.
However, healthcare organizations may lack the experience and tools to integrate concepts from improvement methodologies into their Lean Six Sigma processes and implement solutions to improve hospitalization processes.
This is where healthtech product companies come into play. They provide healthcare companies with data and analytics tools that make processes more efficient and give useful findings. The Belitsoft company, which provides healthcare software development services for healthtech providers, creates and tailors advanced workflow efficiency and patient-centered care solutions like Healthcare Operational Analytics Software. These tools enable healthcare organizations to use data-informed prioritization processes to decide on their project, set a starting point, and define goals.
Challenges with Inpatient Admissions
Every year, tens of millions of patients are admitted to hospitals directly: through planned hospitalization or from a physician’s office for medical reasons.
Patient admission to a hospital is a complex process in which careful coordination between all staff is critical. The longer a patient waits for their turn to be admitted, the higher their negative experience and staff frustration. Hospitals reduce the workload on the emergency department and regulate the flow of patients through direct admissions.
Delays in admitting a patient to a hospital are inevitable if staff are forced to do it entirely manually, there are communication breakdowns and the patient is not the focus.
Gaps Due to Manual Patient Registration Process
Even if stakeholders invest in their electronic health records and other data-based technologies to improve patient care, documents may be filled out manually or faxed during registration. The problem is that faxes and papers can get lost. And if staff are forced to double-check patient data over the phone, the registration process is further delayed. The result: redundant data collection, inefficient transmission, and delays in physician orders.
Communication Breakdowns Between Physicians and the Emergency Department
When patients present to the hospital without physician orders, they must wait a long time for the admissions coordinator to find the necessary info about them and assign a bed to begin treatment. In addition, even the completed orders that arrive at the emergency department before the patient arrives rarely contain all the necessary info. This is because a non-clinical staff member may call the hospital from the physician’s office and cannot accurately describe the patient’s acuity and which department is best to refer them.
Patient Not the Focus upon Admission to the Inpatient Unit
Instead of quickly registering and receiving care, patients are forced to stand in a public area for a long time and wait for the receptionist to complete the hospitalization process and assign a bed. The patient’s relative may be forced to leave them alone to fill out the admission paperwork. In addition, the patient feels unwell and anxious about their condition.
Patients and their families remain low satisfied when an organization’s goals for improving the hospitalization process don’t improve the patient experience in a demonstrable way.
When an organization can expedite the patient to the ward and complete the registration at the patient’s bedside, it’s clear that the non-patient-centered process problem is solved.
It is worth implementing innovative Healthcare Operational Analytics Solutions into the patient admission process to the hospital to solve the above-mentioned key issues.
Organizational Measures to Implement Healthcare Operational Analytics Tools
The first step for healthcare organizations should be to examine their current hospitalization processes with frontline staff and identify gaps for further improvement.
When evaluating processes, it would be best to focus on the following indicators:
- how convenient and effective the process is for staff;
- how long patients wait in the emergency room;
- how difficult it is for doctors to hospitalize patients.
The organization is recommended to create a team that consists of employees with different professional responsibilities: from nursing to customer service. The team should work to reduce the time of hospitalization. It could recruit additional members who have specialized knowledge. The team can map out the actual admission process and analyze gaps and weak areas.
Organizations should pay particular attention to a culture of continuous process improvement and patient-centered care. This would give them a good position to implement solutions across the hospital admissions process in important areas such as eliminating paper and fax forms, collaborating and educating, and speeding the patient to the floor.
Collaboration and Education
It’s recommended that the admission coordinator work with the physician’s office managers. They should train them on how to fill out forms correctly and what info managers should provide when calling the hospital to request direct admission of a patient. The coordinator should explain to the clinic staff how long a patient has to wait for admission if the clinic does not provide the hospital with the necessary info. The specialist should provide a list of key info to the nurse. This info the nurse needs to check when sending a request to the hospital. The list clarifies how acute the patient’s condition is and whether they meet the admission criteria so that they can be sent to the right department.
Speeding Patients to the Floor
The next step for the team should be to solve the registration process problem after the patient arrives at the hospital. After the patient has been registered in a short online form, the admissions officer could accompany them to the hospital room and conduct mobile registration at the patient’s bedside. Patients don’t have to wait long in the admissions room for their turn to register, and the patient’s close relatives don’t have to leave to complete the paperwork.
Features of Operational Analytics Tools for Decreasing Inpatient Admission Time
Replacing the manual inpatient admission process with an online automated alternative speeds up the patient’s journey from door to bed, and simplifies the work of the staff: no need to call the clinic again or worry about faxing. Healthcare Operational Analytics Tools are beneficial for healthcare organizations because of the following features:
- Performing pre-registration of patients through an online short form.
- Tracking free beds in real time via an online bed board.
- Reserving beds for patients based on their condition.
- Alerting of the patient admission schedule via an online bed board.
- Exploring detailed root causes in problem areas and identifying possible solutions via fishbone diagrams.
What Benefits Practices Gain from Using Healthcare Operational Analytics Software
Focus on patients, innovative solutions, strategy based on effective process improvement methodology, and teamwork between hospital departments leads to a nearly halving of the average inpatient admission time.
Hospitals also report they are among the top one percent of facilities for patient satisfaction with the admission process and how quickly patients are admitted.
Patients and their families report that the hospitalization process has become more convenient. Staff report that their frustration and stress levels have decreased. Communication and handover have been improved at every stage of the admission process.
The organization keeps the improvements from its new admission process by regularly training staff and working closely with community providers.
How a Healthcare Software Development Company Can Assist
An outsourcing company like Belitsoft that specializes in healthcare software development assists top healthcare data analytics companies in building robust data operating systems.
For integrated data platforms developed to collect, store, process, and analyze large volumes of data from various sources (Electronic Medical Records, clinic management systems, laboratory systems, financial systems, etc.), the healthcare software development companies:
- Automate data processing workflows (cleansing, standardization, and normalization).
- Configure scalable data warehouses.
- Set up and implement analytical tools for creating dashboards, reports, and data visualizations.
- Ensure a high level of data security and compliance with healthcare regulations such as HIPAA.
- Integrate machine learning and AI into analytics.
If you are looking for expertise in data analytics, data infrastructure, data platforms, HL7 interfaces, workflow engineering, and development within cloud (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud), hybrid, or on-premises environments, a healthcare software development company like Belitsoft also can serve these needs.