The safe and efficient intake and placement of admission requests is a critical function for all hospitals. PRG can implement or redesign your inpatient access center to minimize missed admissions due to inefficient processes, improve the timeliness of transferring patients to your organization, enhance communication to and from referring providers, and create tracking systems to ensure the improvements are sustained.
The PRG team can process map your current intake and identify areas of waste and opportunity. Strategic priorities will then guide the redesign along with a realistic assessment of what the organization is willing to change.
Potential areas for assessment and intervention
- Inpatient access centralization
- Access center software solutions
- Intake questions standardization & minimum info needed
- Recording of intake calls for quality purposes
- Electronic bed boards
- Patient aggregation rules
- Bed ahead concept
- Clarification of primary service (who should be called to accept?) for most conditions
- Call back timeliness expectations and accountability
- Centralized acceptance service (“Doc of the Day”)
- Three-way call when co-managing services need to be involved
- Clarity on direct admission vs ED assessment rules
- Missed admissions categories and tracking
- Financial clearance of transfer requests
- Transport coordination
- Communication and feedback to referring and primary physician
- Clinically integrated network (CIN) patient identification and handling
- Key performance metrics (process and outcome measures) and dashboard creation
- Back transfer agreement process and documentation