Improving Patient flow in Outpatient Department At Apollo Main Hospital, Chennai
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The Orthopedic Department at Apollo Main Hospitals, Chennai has been facing problems in patient flow due to increased delays in other processes like registration, waiting time, other diagnosis etc. This has led to patient flow delays, disruptions and inefficiencies, and it has caused dissatisfaction among some patients and employees resulting in a loss of potential revenue and safety concerns for these patients. In order to combat these challenges, we analyzed data and conducted interviews to establish a comprehensive understanding of the hospital’s orthopedic department, strengthened the existing processes and protocol through verification and validation, and suggested improvements in the system to increase the flow rate of the patient throughout the stay.
Table of Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 2
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 3
HEALTHCARE 5
LEAN IN HEALTHCARE 5
OUTPATIENT DEPARTMENT AT APOLLO MAIN HOSPITAL, CHENNAI 6
OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY 7
SCOPE OF THE STUDY 7
PROCESS STUDY 7
PROCEDURE AT OP DEPARTMENT (OUT PATIENT DEPARTMENT) 8
PROCEDURE AT RADIOLOGY DEPARTMENT (X-RAY) 9
SOURCES OF WASTE 9
DATA COLLECTION 11
DATA ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION 11
RECOMMENDATIONS 14
PATIENT FLOW PROCESS 15
SPAGHETTI ANALYSIS 15
LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY 19
FURTHER SCOPE OF THE STUDY 19
HEALTHCARE
Healthcare is essential to the general welfare of society. It provides for the prevention...
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Blood Collection Centre
The Television showing the token number is to be placed near the blood collection Centre. This would help in smoothening the patient flow.
LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY
The limitations of this study is that only the granularity level that was kept was keeping in mind the feasibility of data collection and time constraints. The processes are much more detailed and the more depth we go, the better will be the insights. To further optimize the processes of a Hospital, all other departments must be considered.
FURTHER SCOPE OF THE STUDY
As an extension to the study, more granular level data for a greater number of patients can be collected so as to derive better insights. This could be implemented using the RFID tags on the patients. Also we can cover other departments of the hospital so as to expand the scope of the study.
Due to WellStar being a multi facility health system, its organizational design is constantly being reviewed for simpler and more efficient processes. WellStar’s two smallest hospitals, WellStar Paulding and WellStar Douglas, previously under went reconstruction with regards to their hierarchical structure in Patient Access Services (PAS). WellStar Paulding, the smallest facility of the five hospitals, renovated their managerial chain of command in PAS. WellStar Paulding’s patient volume is less than half in comparison to the 4 additional hospitals. As a result, their staff is smaller and only requires minimal supervision. In the past WellStar Administrators requested supervisors for every department, a manager of the entire department, and a director that managed PAS’ management directly and PAS staff indirectly. Recent cuts ...
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The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have recently begun requiring hospitals to report to the public how they are doing on patient care. Brown, Donaldson and Storer Brown (2008) introduce and explain how facilities can use quartile dashboards to transform large amounts of data into easy to read and understandable tool to be used for reporting as well as to determine areas in need of improvement. By looking at a sample dashboard for an inpatient rehab unit a greater understanding of dashboards and their benefits can be seen. The sample dashboard includes four general areas, including nurse sensitive service line/unit specific indicators, general indicators, patient satisfaction survey indicators and NDNQI data. The overall performance was found to improve over time. There were areas with greater improvement such as length of stay, than others including RN care hours and pressure ulcers. The areas of pressure ulcers and falls did worse the final quarter and can be grouped under the general heading of patient centered nursing care. The area of patient satisfaction saw a steady improvement over the first three quarters only to report the worst numbers the final quarter. A facility then takes the data gathered and uses it to form nursing plan...
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