Improving Hospital Efficiency through Data Driven Analytics

How do you run an efficient, safe and sustainable hospital?  To start, you must understand how to turn real-time data into information for planning, analysis and performance management.

In healthcare, operational data is continually collected as hospitals attempt to manage information on bed availability, occupancy, cancelled operations, bed turnaround times, and patient-to-caregiver interactions.

 

Data analytics assigns meaning to all of that information, which can then be used to drive improvements across the network of care.  In healthcare, patient data relates to the patient’s journey across the care continuum and their interactions with caregivers.  It can be flow related—such as the number of dead-bed minutes, the time it takes to place a patient, room turnaround time, and discharge readiness.  It can be quality related— such as care hours per patient day and medical equipment location.  It can be harm related—such as response time to a patient fall and patient associated Hand Hygiene Index [HHI].

Recognizing how each piece of the patient flow journey relates through data is fundamental to improving and sustaining quality of care.  Without access to this information, hospitals can’t see the bottlenecks in their network and, therefore, can’t make real-time, informed decisions or forecast future demand.  This information provides:

• Executives and managers with system / hospital-wide visibility to match resources to demand.
• Real-time data that continually drives workflow through automated alerts and escalations using built-in communication tools.
• Accurate patient flow data, which allows organizations to foster a culture of transparency and accountability across multi-disciplinary teams and networks of care.
• Easy access to retrospective, real-time and predictive analytics, which enables organizations to plan and manage their resources—and translates into operational efficiencies, long term financial viability and improved patient safety and experience.

Once the information is gathered, it’s time to look for patterns within the data, which offers a comprehensive view of the past, current and future state of your healthcare organization.  With this data, you’re able to improve current operations and forecast demand and capacity to ensure that patients are cared for in the most effective and safe manner.

In the United Kingdom, TeleTracking client, The Christie Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, uses real-time data to drive operational improvement for portering across the 250 bed, internationally recognized cancer care, research and education hospital.

Since 2013, the trust has seen significant results from TeleTracking’s real-time reports:

• 60-65% productivity gains
• 25% increase in portering resource dedicated to radiology
• 20% increase in portering resource dedicated to pharmacy
• Real-time analytics on complete day-of-jobs
• Increase in jobs complete from 142 to 170

[Interested in learning more about TeleTracking’s TransportTracking™ application, click here to download the datasheet.]

As hospitals struggle to maintain competitive standards, this information becomes the driving component in making informed decisions based on real-time views of the organization and its operational processes.

Interested in learning about analytics on the new, cloud-based TeleTracking IQ™ Platform?  Contact us today at info@teletracking.com or 800-331-3603.

Dr. Julia Fishman is the Vice President, Clinical Operations at TeleTracking Technologies, Inc.  Dr. Fishman works with hospital clinicians to design the best possible care delivery systems for their needs using real-time data provided by TeleTracking’s patient flow solutions to make sustainable operational improvements.