Capacity management
Provider
Optimally utilize and complement hospital capacities
Hospital capacities are expensive. Against the backdrop of increasing economic pressure and growing shortage of skilled workers, existing capacities must be used optimally.
Current Challenges
To treat patients in clinics responsibly and competently, sufficient capacities are needed – in every respect. At the same time, every capacity costs. While too little capacity directly affects the quality and safety of care, using too much capacity harms the economic efficiency of clinics. Capacities must therefore be used optimally. This is a task that hospitals must face time and again due to the numerous challenges.
The provision of services in clinics is often not economical nowadays. The consequence: fewer patients can be treated, treatments are more cost-intensive, patients and staff are more dissatisfied.
The list of challenges in everyday clinic life is long and ranges from uncoordinated admission planning for elective patients, rejection of patients, and lack of patient outflow to unnecessary internal transfers between wards and inefficient bed utilization to lack of length of stay management and missing discharge planning. Communication deficits between different disciplines, unclear occupancy rights and criteria, as well as a lack of discharge planning make the situation worse. WMC HEALTHCARE supports the following objectives:
- Existing capacities should be used efficiently. If, for example, the length of stay management is stringent but correlates with bed capacity management, effective countermeasures must be taken here – for harmonious control. The operating room area can also be optimized: through appropriate utilization and discipline in the first step
- Improved coordination of patient flow from admission to discharge: Through targeted control of under- and overutilization of functional areas, large equipment, etc., bottlenecks in the respective capacities can be reduced
- Time relief for nursing staff and doctors: for a permanently sustainable and high-quality care of patients
- Optimized interdisciplinary cooperation: to effectively use synergies and not waste capacities unnecessarily
Our Solutions
The approaches for effective capacity management in clinics are diverse. WMC HEALTHCARE identifies weaknesses in capacity management with the so-called WMC Quickcheck. In a second step, our team establishes a process benchmark in a best practice comparison – individually and uniquely.
WMC HEALTHCARE helps clinics to profitably utilize their capacities, effectively expand them, and save where necessary. Our approaches after the WMC Quickcheck:
- Consistent management of admission and discharge processes: Transparency about the length of stay of patients, about admission and discharge times, as well as other key figures help clinics to sensibly manage capacities
- Creation of real-time data transparency about available beds including prospective planning: Here, corresponding data such as the required care, the personnel needed for it, and the planned discharge date can be stored
- Length of stay management and capacity management: Discussion and implementation of key figures and measures in interdisciplinary working groups, transparency for all employees
- Establishment of occupancy statutes including occupancy guidelines for high-care areas: Specification of discharge times, clear bed definition (set up, can be set up, can be occupied), clear allocation of bed capacities per specialty department as well as coupled allocation of OR capacities as a prerequisite for admission and discharge management
Our Services for Providers (Hospitals)
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