Healthcare Provider

Why Hospital Administrators Should Focus on Patient Flow

As a provider, you have the difficult job of providing appropriate and timely care to all of your patients. Certain days of the week are almost always worse than others in terms of crowding and delays when your entire system chokes up. You worry about your ability to provide quality care to your patients given the stress on your staff. To make matters worse, pressure on reimbursement levels limits your ability to add resources to address these challenges.

It does not have to be this way. One of the common drivers of all of the above cost and quality challenges is artificial variability in patient flow. By using the tools and techniques provided by operations management science and IHO’s recommended approach for flow variability management, you can reliably manage your patient flow so that there is alignment between the demand for services and the availability of appropriate resources.

Although all care providers and other healthcare personnel benefit from improved patient flow, we highlight a few constituents who play a critical role:

• Surgeons
• Emergency Department Physicians
• Nurses and other inpatient care providers
• Administrators