Simply Stated, It Works Great

Proof of Concept and Profitability

In May 2015, Dr. Dreyer began a consultancy at Halifax Health Medical Center where the software’s proof of concept was trialed. Using standard text messaging, staff and leaders were alerted in an escalating fashion based on three factors:

• 8 or more patients in the ED lobby
• Wait time more than 45 minutes
• Patients who left without being seen (LWBS)

If any of the above factors occurred, all staff were paged notifying that we were in escalation, and all staff identified opportunities to move patients out of the ED. An hour later, if the conditions persisted or worsened, the alert was escalated to the ED nurse manager, the hospital supervisor and the directors of each hospital unit. If conditions did not improve an hour later, the alert was escalated to the CNO and VP of Operations. This led to a dramatic improvement in metrics and profit. Patients leaving before being seen dropped from 29 patients a day to 4 patients a day.  The last quarter’s gross profit was up 9%.

Sustaining change is another hurdle.  Leaders change positions, personnel change positions and focus changes. How can flow be hardwired? 

In Conclusion

We developed predictive and prescriptive software that identifies, in the live environment, bottlenecks in patient flow and waste. With a visual screen and escalating alerts, the software assists staff and leaders to easily identify issues before they are out of control. Accurate operational assessments can now be made for both management and staff, returning a team atmosphere to the ED as all parties are able to simultaneously see and address bottlenecks in the system. Halifax Health Medical Center is the Beta Test site for the software and is already experiencing dramatic improvement in patient care quality.