Hospital Bed Utilization: Increasing Throughout

摘要

Ben Taub General Hospital is experiencing numerous emergency center ambulance diversions. The diversions are a symptom of lack of bed availability or slow patient throughput. Patient throughput is a function of appropriateness of admissions, accelerated post-acute transfers, and expedited care. Further, enhanced discharge processes such as earlier physician rounds can reduce diversions but has little effect on throughput when measured in days. The purpose of this study is to determine if the hospital can alleviate bed capacity constraints. Descriptive and inferential analyses were conducted for each group of variables affecting patient throughput. The average length of stay of 5.87 days was used to calculate the potential for increased throughput. Inappropriate admissions, specifically 388 observation patients, block 56 other patients from beds per year. Thirty-two medically stable long stay patients impede 704 patients from inpatient care per year. Finally, expediting the care itself holds the promises of 10,761 additional patients per year.