When TeleTracking was founded in 1991, patient flow automation wasn’t a concept.
The notion that patient movement had a rhythm and pattern had not occurred, automation was something done in factories, and overcrowding was a problem for urban emergency rooms on a Friday night.
The spark for TeleTracking’s patient flow automation came from a software program that alerted housekeepers in a Hawaiian hotel to clean rooms that were vacated. If it could work in a hotel, perhaps it could also work in a hospital.
The term ‘patient flow’ was coined by former HHS Secretary Donald Berwick, who was among the first healthcare experts to link the quality of care to the management of patient flow.
Patient flow used to be about getting the patient from point A to point B. However, a typical hospital stay covers an entire alphabet!
Patient flow is now part of a much larger process designed to increase operational efficiency so that patients get to the right treatment at the right time with the right resources. We call that Healthcare Operations Management.
This type of enterprise visibility helps hospitals improve the way work gets done. It recognizes that optimizing capacity and throughput requires a synchronized system of monitoring and managing workflows that support patient treatment. These workflows include:
By taking the time lag out of daily operations, operational management on an enterprise scale improves finances by saving hours and hours of wasted time. It also improves outcomes by ensuring that patients get the level of care they need when they need it.
TeleTracking has built the operational backbone, or nerve center, of hospital operations with a software platform that integrates all of our solutions. By combining patient flow, RTLS and business analytics software, leadership teams have the ability to run their hospitals in absolute real time, with immediate transparency into virtually every daily function so they can be optimized.
This online “motion picture” or Command Center was recently depicted at Carilion Clinic in Roanoke, VA. Their state of the art Transfer and Communications Center allows them to track virtually all functions within their enterprise.
The automated patient flow market that TeleTracking created over two decades ago was the foundation for a logical evolution of technology that is providing much larger benefits to hospitals as they search for more cost effective ways to deliver quality healthcare.
And now, we’re taking those capabilities outside the hospitals four walls and into the community so that care can be delivered to even more people. To learn more about TeleTracking’s Community Access Portal solution, view the video below, or click here to download our datasheet.
This will allow us to personalize your experience on TeleTracking.com. Of course, we will never sell your information and you can opt-out at any time. Need help now? Contact a Patient Flow expert.