Command Center: A Robust Approach to Improving Efficiency and Outcomes

Command Center is a centralized approach to operations, where, real-time and predictive analytics from disparate data sources is aggregated and used as a coordinated approach to managing multiple stakeholders within a hospital or a health system.

It brings together people, processes, and technology under a single physical space to execute collaborative decision-making and workflows supporting the improvement of patient throughput.

The number of patients seen over a given period of time, while ensuring no patient waits for the care they need, is the ultimate goal for healthcare facilities. Patient throughput is a marker of quality for any healthcare system. Though the right amount of time may vary for each patient, the operational process of delivering high-quality care is often a challenge. When the patients do not receive timely treatment and are not discharged when they should be, this results in a backlog of patients waiting, and a shortage of beds for incoming patients. Improving patient throughput isn’t just about seeing patients as quickly as possible; it is a complex initiative, ensuring that the patients receive quality care at the right time, in the right venue, by the right clinical experts.

The Command Centers can propel significant outcomes that include- improved efficiency, increased revenue, and magnified patient safety and satisfaction.

Driving towards substantial operational and financial gains

The way hospitals manage their patient flow across the entire care continuum is experiencing a tremendous change with the advent of the operational Command Center model. While reducing time for patient access is a complex problem as populations grow and age, spending on healthcare has become a matter of national attention with rapidly rising costs and variable quality outcomes. As a solution to these, Operational Command Centers eliminate waste at the core by enabling visibility, alignment, and resource coordination across health systems. With an enhanced command center model in place, healthcare can benefit by:-

• Enhanced Patient Flow: This involves efficiency in placing, transferring, or diverting patients. Quick dissemination of critical information, enabling easy patient transportation and improved bed capacity management, etc.
• Increased Revenue: Lower costs due to reduced length of stay and staffing inefficiency can lead to increased financial gains.
• Better Patient Experience: Reduced wait times and streamlined care contributes to improved patient experience and satisfaction.
• Improved Staff Experience: With centralized control features, it enables improved communication and collaboration amongst the various departments.
• Actionable & Transparent Data: Transparency in viewing and accessing the aggregated data leads to specific, actionable insights for all operational aspects by deploying descriptive and/or predictive analysis.

Best Practices for Implementing a Command Center

• Do a pre-assessment: To identify the problems to be solved, the expected outcomes, and how to achieve them, undergoing a pre-assessment is a must. Examine costs, identify needed data integration, and find a centralized location with enough space to accommodate the people who will be working in the Command Center.
• Establish governance: By creating a leadership committee that includes key stakeholders from all necessary departments, it helps to establish the required governance.
• Audit Workflows: Conduct an audit of workflows to get a comprehensive understanding of the current organizational workflows and how they might be impacted by a Command Center. It may need some adjustments once the Command Center’s processes, tools, and systems are put in place.
• Technology Set-up: Define your data-integration needs. Set up software that supports your workflows and helps harness aggregated, real-time data to drive desired outcomes.
• Provide post-launch support: Implement strong people operations to ensure expertise and post-launch help.

A better way to coordinate care

According to a recent study by KLAS, Operational Command Centers were found to have vital outcomes in the healthcare realm, reporting a 96% improved patient flow and 78% financial gains across various healthcare systems. The healthcare industry has come a long way, collaborating with technology to get the best of care facilities while constantly striving to improve patient throughput, and reduced length of stay while eliminating the dependency on redundant ways of operation. Innovaccer’s Hospital Command Center brings interoperability, access to data, and integration come under one roof while enabling:-

• Real-time visibility into critical resources helping teams to predict, identify and resolve capacity constraints rapidly.
• Pre-built interfaces with integrations to all major IT vendors to maintain your data aggregation needs.
• Robust unified data model to standardize patient data from disparate sources into a single longitudinal view.
• Integrated views about operational performance with easy access to information and situational awareness.

The loss of time can result in loss of lives. In a survey, it was estimated that about 37,000 deaths are correlated with ED boarding each year, while a 1.7% increase in the mortality rates is correlated to the patient boarding taking 6+ hours while waiting for a bed, with an additional 1.5 days in length of stay. The time is ripe to reorient care delivery - clinically and operationally - to reduce the complexity and enhance the productivity in the entire process.