Managing patient transfers is complex, challenging and potentially inefficient. It can be time-consuming and difficult to measure the effectiveness of your transfer processes. If you can’t see potential problems, you can’t make improvements.
Avoid Hidden Costs and Missed Revenue
Inefficiency is costly. Failure to accept appropriate patients is costly. A reputation for delayed response times to transfer requests is costly. These things don’t have a line item on your income statement, but they do have a negative impact.
Inefficient patient transfer processes devour staff time that could be devoted to more valuable activities. Such processes delay or interrupt patient care and have been shown to limit the volume of inbound transfers. Conduit Health Partners analyzed first-year results from three health systems that switched to its centralized solution in 2021. All three saw a 30% or higher increase in inbound transfers from affiliated and non-affiliated entities.1
Enable Optimal Treatment
An effective solution requires real-time transparency into the capacity and capabilities of other area hospitals. Standardizing acceptance workflows will enable timely action and promote optimal outcomes for the patient. An organization that operates a centralized patient transfer system can deliver that transparency and:
- Find the most appropriate care when timing is critical
- Promote network patient retention
- Promote better patient outcomes
- Reduce emergency department boarding
Promptly locating the right bed for a patient at the right location can affect the length of stay, hospitalization costs and even mortality rates.2 The longer a patient waits for a bed, the greater risk of a poor outcome.
Impact Patient Care
The current nursing shortage puts additional pressure on your nursing staff to potentially work longer hours, care for more patients and participate in the transfer process at the same time. Burnout and an aging nursing population will likely exacerbate the shortage in the next few years.
Traditional practices require nurses to make multiple phone calls to locate an appropriate bed and then arrange for medical transport. The Journal of Clinical Nursing determined that it takes nurses an average of 42 minutes to manage a patient transfer. That can really add up.
Your patients may already feel the impact of diminished nursing staff. If you can relieve nurses of managing transfers, they’ll be able to spend more time providing patient care.
Alleviate Staff Burden and Improve Service
A centralized patient transfer system with experienced transfer center staff addresses a number of common challenges. Inconsistent standards and routines often create inefficient transfer practices. The lack of access to current bed availability at other locations delays patient placement. Multiple demands on your staff’s time can slow the progress of both inbound and outbound transfers.
Conduit Health Partners can help your organization centralize patient transfer services. Using our model, your staff makes one phone call to start the transfer process. We do the rest. We have up-to-date insights on available beds and services so we can quickly locate the right bed and dispatch transportation. You can be confident that our qualified, experienced clinical staff will act in your patient’s best interests.
Rely on Data-Driven Strategies
An efficient centralized patient transfer center can predict and manage patient volume. Conduit relies on dependable, data-supported strategies to reduce care delivery delays. We’ll partner with you to create an oversight council that promotes optimized processes, quality care, and growth for your organization. Together, we’ll analyze your data to identify:
- Service line gaps and opportunities for growth
- Ways to increase retention and decrease the outmigration of appropriate patients
- Surge capacity and capability
- Predictive metrics to manage patient volumes, such as receiving and referring facility, time to physician acceptance, and time to bed placement
We use the findings to create custom strategies to increase patient retention and acquisition and support growth.
Partnering with Conduit Patient Transfer Center allows your organization to:
- Boost patient acquisition
- Eliminate patient transfer burdens on your staff
- Gain valuable insight through actionable data
- Increase efficiency and improve patient flow
- Optimize patient outcomes and satisfaction
To learn more, connect with us for a consultation.
Sources:
1 Optimize Transfer Center Practices to Improve Patient Acquisition Whitepaper
