By Dominique M. Wells MSN, RN
Every member of a health system’s team, often comprising hundreds of highly trained professionals, is enabled by the competency of their colleagues, and the effectiveness of operational staff who carry out their specific functions to the best of their ability. Beyond safeguarding profitability, maintaining operational dexterity and efficiency is crucial to assuring every patient has the best possible outcome as they navigate their way through your health system.
But creating efficiency inside a health system certainly has its difficulties, especially within the current pandemic-induced climate. Patients entering a health system from an emergency department or other facility rely on hospital personnel to transfer them to the appropriate location to get the treatment they need. Choosing a suitable location can come with many challenges such as timing, available capacity at receiving facilities, identifying the appropriate attending physician for acceptance, and availability of transport providers may impact the ability to ensure timely care for the patient. Typically, a single patient transfer requires a hospital staff member to make and receive up to nine calls or more to communicate the necessary information and coordinate the transfer.
Don’t do it alone
Many hospitals lack the necessary in-house resources for fully efficient patient transfer services. Often, there is no single point of contact designated to handle the task, and it is left up to the hospital staff currently on hand. When this happens, it takes people away from their core functions and forces them to perform a job they are often unfamiliar with, resulting in slow and sometimes less-than-ideal results. And besides the impact on patient experience, the hospital experiences losses in productivity and overall increase in cost of care.
How Conduit Health Partners can help
Conduit’s Patient Transfer Services were explicitly developed for hospitals experiencing issues like these. We work with your hospital or health system to provide a centralized approach for patient transfers. Our team of experienced nurses is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to serve as a single access point for transfer coordination across networks of care, with the resources and expertise necessary for timely admissions to improve patient care experiences and outcomes. Effective resource utilization promotes optimal productivity, but can also facilitate organizational or program growth. In fact, from 2017 – 2022, one large midwestern healthcare system which partnered with Conduit saw a 10% year-over-year inbound transfer growth.
A step above the rest
Health care executives need data to inform strong strategic decisions for their organizations. Conduit’s daily, monthly, and as-needed analytics provides transparency to the transfer process and arms executives with the critical information they need to make physician recruiting, service line development, and operational improvement decisions. The who, what, how, when and why of transfers becomes clear, helping leaders drive organizational success. Using analytic strategies that focus on timely, efficient care, our team will expertly manage your patient transfers, direct admissions, or consultations 24/7 so that your team can focus on its most critical role: improving and maintaining high-quality patient care.
Conduit has the diverse clinical experience, critical thinking, and judgment skills necessary to make a lasting difference in improving patient care and efficiency. Contact us today to learn more about our patient transfer services, any of our other solutions, and other partnership opportunities to improve patient care
About the Author: Dominique Wells, MSN, RN
Dominique Wells is the Chief Operating Officer of Conduit Health Partners. In her role, Dominque oversees the operations, new business development, and quality processes for Conduit Health Partners.
Throughout her career, Dominique has held various clinical and nursing leadership roles. In these roles, she has driven clinical standardization through order set utilization and design, improved formulary compliance, and improved policy and accreditation alignment within electronic health records.
Her collaborative partnerships have garnered effective change management and resulted in substantial organizational savings for multi-hospital health systems.
Dominique obtained her RN degree from The Christ Hospital School of Nursing, her BSN from Ohio University and her MSN in Nursing Executive Leadership from Northern Kentucky University. She was inducted into Sigma Theta Tau National Nursing Honor Society and is a member of AONL.
