Solutions | Healthcare

Improving Patient Discharge Efficiency

A local hospital often finds itself short of available patient beds and/or rooms, causing it to turn away patients.  As it strives to improve efficiency in releasing patients, it must also adhere to a very strict policy controlling the release process which includes explanation of treatment and prescriptions at home, diet, activities, and follow up visits or treatments.  To meet this challenge, the hospital must find a way to notify its staff when a patient has been released by their doctor to initiate the release process, accelerating yet documenting each step to ensure a high level of patient care.

Solution Benefits – The hospital will benefit in the following ways:

• If patients can be released more efficiently, patient beds and rooms will be vacated faster, leaving them open for new patients and effectively increasing revenue opportunities.
• Once patients are released by their doctor, they are eager to go home; accelerating that process will lead to higher patient satisfaction.
• A process that provides notification to those employees involved in the release process will help to control their work flow for more efficient use of their time, potentially requiring fewer employees to process the same amount of patients.
• As the hospital documents each step in the release process, it builds a database for review, training, and legal protection.

Solution

The focus of this solution is to expedite the patient discharge process.

• A doctor informs the nurse’s station that a patient is ready to be released with written instructions for treatment and prescriptions at home, diet, activities, and follow up visits or treatments; the patient’s assigned nurse selects an icon from an IP phone initiating the patient release process.
• According to hospital policy, the IP phone queries the nurse if they have reviewed the doctor’s instructions; if the nurse indicates yes, administrative staff is paged to either a mobile Cisco 792x phone or their mobile device, notifying them of the patient ready to be processed for release.
• The administrative staff discusses insurance coverage, payment options, patient satisfaction surveys, etc. and has the patient sign the final release forms; once completed the administrative staff hits an icon on an IP phone and enters the identifier of the patient processed for release; the application pages an orderly on either their Cisco 792x mobile phone or a smart mobile device to wheel the patient to the hospital lobby, while at the same time paging others to prepare the room for the next patient.
• The orderly arrives, seats the patient in the wheelchair and takes them to the lobby, at which time they press an icon on an IP phone and enters the patient identifier, indicating the patient has been delivered to the front lobby.
• As the room is finished being prepared for the next patient, an orderly touches an icon on an IP phone indicating the room is ready for the next patient.
• As administrative staff looks for available rooms, up-to-date information is available, showing rooms recently vacated and available for new patients.

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