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Hospital Profile

368 licensed beds
14 operating rooms
54 emergency department beds
42K+ emergency department patients per year
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EMPATH - Healthcare Consulting Company
  EMPATH Projects





  Design and Implementation Projects

Texas Client

"This project definitely has changed the culture. Now, we have hardwired performance and accountability. It has been truly transformational in how it changes ways we think about being patient-focused, about really creating a competitive advantage. It has taken us to a whole new level of achieving bona fide performance excellence on a sustainable basis."
President


Challenge


This client, in a family of faith-based health care providers consisting of 14 leading not-for-profit hospitals and seven affiliate hospitals in and around the Dallas-Fort Worth region, had recently been awarded the state's highest honor for quality and organizational performance.

Although they were considered high-performing, the hospital's president knew that there were major opportunities to improve throughput and patient flow. This was particularly important for the hospital in presenting high-quality services to the community through the efficiency of its operations.

The hospital struggled with emergency department (ED) wait times for patients and poor patient satisfaction. Many ED patients waited hours for service or left before treatment, creating an environment filled with unhappy, frustrated patients and staff. Inpatient bed capacity problems contributed to backup in the ED. With the adult acute care units routinely over their occupancy levels, staff struggled to identify available beds.

The hospital also needed to improve performance in operating room scheduling and the placing of post-surgical patients. They wanted to achieve and maintain patient satisfaction in the top decile, well beyond current levels. They wanted to eliminate inefficiencies in many common patient care processes. In the end, they believed this was the right thing to do for patient care.



Achievement


Sample of Project Results

On the admissions side of the ED, a well-managed reception area has replaced the overcrowded waiting room. Nearly every patient care subprocess – triage, getting patients back to a room quickly, ordering and completing lab and radiology work – has been redesigned and improved to Best-in-Class performance targets.

These achievements enabled the hospital to confidently offer and meet its "30 Minute Promise" – an assurance that every patient in the emergency room would be seen by a physician or physician assistant within 30 minutes of check-in. There is now a lot of good will in the community, particularly with the ED seeing 20-30 more patients per day.

On the other side of the equation – discharge from the ED, the ED is not boarding as many patients and has significantly accelerated its admission process to the inpatient units.

Results show that patient volume increased by nearly 6%, beyond the ED's target of 2%. ED patients Left Without Being Seen decreased from 2.3% to less than .5% - recapturing nearly 1,000 patients per year and adding significant revenue to the bottom line. Patient satisfaction in the ED rose from the 42nd to the 95th percentile.

All of these improvements occurred at a time when the other hospitals in the system experienced flat ED volume growth. They were achieved with minimal or no extra staff, and no additional space.

On the inpatient units, managers and charge nurses now have clearer expectations and shared accountability for meeting targets. A daily review of key inpatient metrics and increased communication between care management staff and charge nurses ensures this client's ability to better manage the discharge process. Hospitalists now write discharge orders earlier. Previously, 15% of discharge orders were written by 9am; now, more than 50%. Additionally, the number of patients discharged by 11am went from 20% to nearly 50%.



"However minor the injury is, waiting an hour, two hours or three hours is unacceptable. We really want to provide better, more efficient care, and that's driving us to this '30-minute promise'."


Emergency Services Medical Director