‘Command centre’ speeds patient flow
Wait times from ER to bed cut back dramatically
Twice a day on any given day at Windsor Regional Hospital, a small army of nurses and clerks gather at the two campuses to discuss what’s happened since the last meeting, and what’s likely to happen in the coming hours or the next day.
It’s a process that’s only been in place since Oct. 23, but the Patient Flow Improvement Program Command Centre has proven invaluable in helping reduce various strains on the system, including the time a patient goes from the emergency room to a bed when needed.
“You think of an airport, somebody’s managing all of the planes that are coming in, all of the planes that are coming out, that’s what the command centre does,” said chief nursing executive Nancy McCullough.
“It’s really the air traffic controller of patients. Every patient that’s coming into our hospital through the ED (emergency department) and the surgical centre, we know who are they, where are they, how can we really track them in real time, what bed do they need to be moved into, and how to we get them there.”
There are 150 nurses and admission clerks linked to the command centre, which is located in rooms equipped with a number of computers and paper flow charts at both campuses.
“That’s what’s really been special about the command centre,” said McCullough.
“What we really didn’t do before is we actually have people assigned to that role, that’s their whole job. We have a nurse 24/7 and an admitting clerk 24/7, that’s their whole job, to sit there, to look at the monitors, to get on the phone and track where people are, to monitor the process, and get them to where they need to be in a much more timely fashion.”
On Thursday afternoon, the media were allowed to sit in on one of the twice-daily so-called huddles, which happen at 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., where more than a half-dozen people gather at both campuses, connected by video link, and discuss what’s going on.
Representatives from critical care, surgery, mental health, emergency, medicine and family birthing read out how many patients have been discharged, how many have been admitted and how many are slated for discharge before the next meeting.
The hospital will implement a new computer program to further streamline the system and decrease the use of pen and paper.
“Before we started to do this work, once you were admitted into the emergency department, once the emergency room physician said you need to be admitted, and the physician that’s accepting you is the physician, before we did this, that took 11 hours,” said McCullough.
Since the command centre was implemented, the wait time to go from emergency to a bed has been cut to 2½ hours at Met and 3½ hours at the Ouellette Campus.
“It’s phenomenal, so we’ve cut it in half, and a little bit more,” said McCullough.
“And so it’s living proof with data. It’s been absolutely amazing for us.”