Patient Flow

Reducing Delay in Healthcare Delivery

By: Randolph Hall

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eText | 11 October 2006 | Edition Number 1

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PATIENT FLOW: Reducing Delay in Healthcare Delivery is dedicated to improving healthcare through reducing the delays experienced by patients. One aspect of this goal is to improve the flow of patients, so that they do not experience unnecessary waits as they flow through a healthcare system. Another aspect is ensuring that services are closely synchronized with patterns of patient demand. Still another aspect is ensuring that ancillary services, such as housekeeping and transportation, are fully coordinate with direct patient care. Past experience shows that effective management of healthcare delays can produce dramatic improvements in medical outcomes, patient satisfaction, and access to service, while also reducing the cost of healthcare. The 15 chapters of this book exposes the healthcare community of researchers, practitioners and administrators to a set of techniques and strategies that can be used by clinicians and administrators to substantially reduce delays in healthcare delivery. It is the first book treatment to have reduction in patient delay as its sole focus, and therefore, provides the foundation by which hospitals can implement change. Reflecting the highly interdisciplinary and practitioner nature of this book, the chapters have been written by doctors, nurses, industrial engineers, system engineers and geographers, and thus, these perspectives provide the comprehensive view needed to address the problem of patient delay.

The book provides a "hands-on" discussion and methods for solving a variety of problems that inhibit prompt and swift health care delivery. Some examples are:

presents a set of breakthrough strategies that use "real-time"monitoring systems for continuous improvement;

offers techniques for scheduling staff needs to match patterns in patient demand, and thus reduce predictable delays;

utilizes simulation modeling techniques for both healthcare design and process improvement;

provides methods for forecasting the demand for healthcare on a region-wide basis;

presents queueing theory as a general method for modeling patient waits in healthcare;

outlines rapid delivery of medication in the event of a catastrophic event, such as a pandemic or terrorist attack;

demonstrates the importance of optimizing care as patients transition from one care setting to the next care setting with an emphasis on clinical outcomes and the business case;