Throughput Optimization

The Situation:

Discharging hospitalized patients at just the right time improves quality, safety, and financial outcomes. Patients who spend too much or too little time in the hospital are more likely to have undesirable outcomes. If they stay too long, they can be unnecessarily exposed to safety risks, such as hospital-acquired infections and other complications and can create bottlenecks in the overall patient care delivery system. On the other hand, patients who are released too early are at high risk of being readmitted or experiencing complications at home.

A sample application highlights length of stay metrics for a specific physician and includes comparative peer ranking information.

One of the key hospital throughput metrics to decrease safety risks, ensure financial viability and maximize bed capacity is Length of Stay (LOS). While hospital executives, physicians, and administrators all understand the importance of throughput optimization, most lack the visibility and awareness of administrative, operational, or clinical issues driving excess length of stay. Reviewing data at each physician group or committee does not seem to improve much, and rather than determining where or how to improve performance, physicians may question the data or shift the blame elsewhere. As a result, it is very difficult for most hospital executives and decision makers to gain a clear and meaningful understanding of the root causes underlying excess LOS and subsequent impact on overall throughput and bed capacity.

In looking at Average Length of Stay (ALOS), hospital administrators generally feel their LOS is under control. In reality, averages disguise underlying problems, and deeper LOS analysis will reveal that there are significant excess days working to the detriment of the hospital and its patients.

What is Needed Now?

Excess days work against the hospital’s desire for the best patient and operational outcomes. In order to effectively manage LOS, hospital decision makers need an analytical application that not only gets the right level of information to the right decision makers so they can continually monitor progress, but also provides immediate insight into the core processes and care issues that result in excess days. In addition, the entire organization must develop a keen awareness of the issues that tend to increase the likelihood of LOS problems.

The WhiteCloud Solution

The WhiteCloud Throughput Optimization solution provides timely insight into the core processes and care issues that result in suboptimal length of stay. Based on the WhiteCloud Performance Analytics™ methodology, our throughput solution provides clearly visible, relevant and precise information about process issues and points of responsibility that will help you identify inefficient care delivery and other factors that drive excess patient care days.

• Visibility to the drivers that result in excess days and decreased throughput, including the ability to continually monitor progress and the flexibility to drill down into the details when a problem arises.
• The ability to stay on top of throughput and length of stay issues by monitoring progress and results from specific performance improvement programs (PIPs) to better understand which action plans have the greatest positive impact.
• The right information at decision makers’ fingertips, automatically updated to ensure throughput efficiencies are not inadvertently increasing readmissions or negatively impacting quality.

The Result: Improved Clinical Performance From Physicians Through Compelling and Actionable Scorecards

The WhiteCloud Throughput Optimization solution will help you minimize patient safety risks, optimize throughput and reduce the financial implications associated with excess LOS days. These solutions deployed in mid-to-large sized U.S. hospitals have resulted in more than $1.3M savings in the first 12 months of operation. In addition, the impact on quality and patient satisfaction paralleled these impressive financial savings.

• Clinical management teams have the visibility they need into the drivers of increased length of stay as well as the ability to focus efforts on areas where they will make the biggest impact.
• Individualized physician profiles provide detailed analysis of the drivers of excess length of stay
• Ability to monitor compliance with performance improvement programs targeting length of stay.
• Focused attention on specific physicians and groups of physicians performing below target, rather than general improvement efforts.