The State of Healthcare Operations

Today’s challenges call for action now to face the future with confidence.

There are a lot of conversations about the challenges facing healthcare, and even more about how to solve them, including investing more money. More money is not the answer. Good healthcare doesn’t have to cost more. Reorienting care delivery to do what’s best for the patient both clinically and operationally and finding ways to reduce complexity and improve productivity to achieve efficiencies is easier said than done—but it is possible.

EVERY MINUTE COUNTS

Forty-six minutes was just enough time to save the life of a new mother. That’s the amount of time it took for her to be transported from a regional hospital emergency department to the intensive care unit at the main medical center, after suffering cardiac arrest following an emergency Cesarean section due to fetal distress. Specialists were able to save her life because a physician at the regional facility made one phone call to the system’s command center and the team there arranged transportation, had a bed secured and contacted on-call specialists in a matter of minutes. And, the nurse who took the call stayed on the phone with the paramedic while the patient was transported. It’s the combination of people, process and technology that allows medical professionals to save lives.

This story can be found in the 2020 Winter Issue of TeleTracking's Patient Flow Quarterly Magazine. Download the full issue.