Patient Flow Problems and Solutions

Hospital operational problems continue to mount. Emergency room overcrowding and diversions, lack of available routine and ICU beds, frequent bumping of elective surgery cases and overburdened nursing resources are just several of the growing operational problems facing hospitals today. The consequences are upset doctors, distraught nurses, unhappy patients, and perhaps most serious, growing quality of care issues.

The traditional solutions of adding more physical capacity or increasing staffing are no longer feasible (or advisable) in today’s healthcare environment. The recent focus on consumer driven healthcare and information transparency does not address the cause of these problems and, therefore, will not solve these operational challenges. Rather, it will exacerbate them as a result of more demanding consumers and increased patient volume at high quality, cost efficient hospitals.

The true solution to these operational issues is the effective management of the variability of patient flow through applying operations management techniques from private industry. By applying these techniques, hospitals can eliminate peaks and valleys in patient flow and thereby:

• Expand the number of patients that can be treated
• Reduce patient wait times and ER overcrowding
• Eliminate delays in surgeries
• Reduce nursing overload and overtime
• Improve doctor, nurse and patient satisfaction
• Improve patient quality of care and safety
• Reduce cost and increase revenue

All these favorable outcomes can be achieved without any incremental investment in capital or staffing.

 

Company Background

To effectively address the need for solutions to patient flow problems, Richard Siegrist established PatientFlow Technology, Inc. in August of 2006.  Richard Siegrist is President & CEO of the company.  Richard Siegrist is a proven CEO for start-up companies, having co-founded HealthShare Technology, Inc., which was sold to WebMD in 2005, and co-founded Transition Systems, Inc. (for-profit subsidiary of New England Medical Center), which was acquired by Eclipsys. He has also been a faculty member at the Harvard School of Public Health in the Department of Health Policy and Management for the last 20 years. He has a BA in Political Economy from Williams College, an MS in Accounting from NYU Graduate School of Business and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. He is also a CPA.

PatientFlow Technology offers operational assessments and patient flow implementations to hospitals and health systems. The company's goal is to lead the market in the development and adoption of patient flow management techniques, and in doing so, make a meaningful contribution to improving the quality and efficiency of healthcare services in the United States and internationally.