CEO of ABOUT, a leading orchestration and care company that is helping fitness systems balance capacity and grow with resilience
Healthcare systems have functioned as a real estate portfolio or asset mosaic, in which each site has its own metrics of functionality, finance, and operational processes.
Too often, the focus is not on sharing resources or optimizing the functionality of the entire system, but on the individual components. More recently, the pandemic has exposed weaknesses in functioning as a collection of disparate pieces rather than a single system, compromising providers’ ability to access patient care as well as their ability to use all their resources well, adding people, materials and capabilities.
In the face of increasing patient demand, which is occurring at the same time, the inability of fitness systems to jointly serve as a whole and utilize all resources has a significant constraint and bottleneck to care delivery. Now, as we reach a position of recovery, it’s time to re-examine and rethink how fitness systems deserve to serve and be structured to better serve their communities.
For fitness systems that have functioned as “parts” rather than a “whole,” it’s almost as if they’ve followed a “build and come” expansion strategy. They build a facility, open doors to the community, and greet patients as they arrive. However, this is a more reactive technique that is unlikely to produce effects in the future.
Instead, fitness formulas want to reconsider patient flow and care orchestration. Often, they think in terms of what happens within the walls of the hospital. Significant investments in electronic medical records have helped generate some power once patients arrive at the hospital or after. Care center, however, the flow begins outside the walls of the physical care formula and continues after patients leave the intensive care center.
When fitness formulas begin to think more holistically, attracting patients and moving them more successfully to the next most productive care facility, they can take on demand, capacity, and performance. of those individual areas.
Health formulas have many other contexts in which they can care for patients, and others have emerged due to the pandemic. As care settings become more distributed, fitness formula leaders will need to make decisions that make certain patients in the optimal setting for the type of care they need.
This requires active participation through fitness formulas, rather than simply leaving those vital decisions to patients, their caregivers, doctors and specialists. to the maximum suitable destination for the care they want.
On the other hand, with the monetary pressures facing fitness systems, it is vital that they are more proactive in how they open a referral channel for patients who need access to intensive care. Intensive care is under a lot of strain today due to staff shortages. , which means that many fitness systems have a reduced capacity to care for patients. Therefore, it is imperative that fitness systems optimize the resources at their disposal to ensure that patients who are in their beds are in the appropriate sets and amenities for their condition.
Historically speaking, the biggest bottleneck for fitness systems falling short of full capacity has not been labor shortages, but performance. Supportive home, a skilled nursing facility, or rehabilitation center. It is imperative to discharge patients successfully and temporarily so that they do not enjoy the excessive patient days they stay in acute care facilities, but they do not want that.
When a patient is bedridden one day too many, it prevents another more complex patient from accessing the same resource. In this sense, flow disorders become the main limitation to bring patients and the lever call.
Health systems have invested in many data technologies in recent decades, such as electronic fitness records and billing and scheduling systems. However, when it comes to measuring things like demand, capacity, and performance, the applicable knowledge resides in a multitude of data systems. who want to connect to exchange knowledge.
The key is to attach operations in silos and remote care settings within the fitness formula to leverage knowledge and design it in a way that considers the entire continuum of care, from patient transfers within the fitness formula to patient transitions to post-acute care. Amenities: For care providers to better manage a patient’s level of travel. This is a very different procedure from a challenge documenting an inpatient’s medical records, billing, or staff scheduling. This is not something those formulas weren’t created for, so it’s vital to have discussions about goal-oriented attention orchestration methods that can be extended to the existing underdesign.
When fitness systems use resources more successfully and solve the performance challenge, they create more capacity to treat other patients, improving their abilities to serve their communities. In addition, when fitness systems operate more successfully, many regime responsibilities can be automated, saving time. which was previously spent on manual work, such as phone calls, emails and texting patients. This removes friction from plan-making processes, allows physicians to work at maximum leave, and makes the work environment more fun for staff and physicians.
The pandemic marked a milestone in the history of physical care. It demonstrated the strength of our fitness system, but also revealed glaring weaknesses by accelerating the expansion of outdoor care in classic settings.
From simplifying workflows and more successful knowledge processing to communication between caregivers, more collaborative and coordinated care accelerates the patient journey, improves outcomes and improves the overall patient experience.
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