PartheasFlow

While intelligent patient flow management is a really good idea for the majority of clinics and hospitals, it may not be a top idea for you. Honestly, it is possible that it just not a proper fit for a variety of reasons. Read more when it is not a good idea for you!?

Perhaps the first question ought to be, when does intelligent patient flow management work very well? What does that actually mean ‘work very well’? We would define “work well” when the solution offers you the following:

• You are able to deliver added value to your patients. Find out more here.
• You are able to deliver added value to your physicians and nursing staff. Find out more here.
• You are able to generate a significant ROI. Find out more here.
• As a cherry on top of the cake, it can provide additional information to (care) management. Find out more here.

However, perhaps your organization is unable to reach that point. Possible reasons may include

• You have a very specific and very complex collaboration model which requires intense verbal collaboration for a single consultation between different care providers.
• The elapse time of a single consultation/examination exceeds an hour. That means your patient turnover rate is very low.
• The size of your operations concerns only a very limited amount of concurrent (waiting) patients, for instance a single practice.
• For whatever reason, your patients need to be constantly accompanied by someone of the nursing staff.

Any of the above could prove to be impediments for a worthwhile implementation. Unfortunately, also your IT itself could be a problem.

IT infrastructure for dinosaurs?

The majority of European hospitals made significant changes to their IT infrastructure in the past 2 decades. But, yes, they also still exist: health facilities with an IT infrastructure that would only make dinosaurs proud! That could mean

• You do not have a basic IT network infrastructure in your building.
• Your agenda system is stand-alone. That means it can in no way exchange information with other IT applications.
• You allow your current IT suppliers to have an eighties mindset: “we don’t do integration”.
• Your organisation has no leverage to improve its IT infrastructure.

Well, in short, in such scenario you probably have more urgent things to tackle than patient flows.

Are there other reasons? No doubt, but a lot of them are issues that can be tackled in fairly easy way. At the top of the “lets not do it”: resistance to change. You ‘ll find out more about this in article 6 of this series (coming soon).

This is an article (5 out of 7) in the series “Why would a hospital have (no) intelligent patient flow management?“. Are you interested in such solution, but you have no clue on whether it is even feasible for your organisation? Don’t hesitate to reach out to us via our contact page. Alternatively, write us an email at info@partheas.com.