Source: Healthcare Dive
Hospital inefficiencies not only interfere with workflow, but also cost hospitals billions of dollars each year. Some of the most common hospital inefficiencies are:
- Inadequate communication methods – The results of the Ponemon Institute survey found that the primary reasons for communication challenges were the inefficiency of pagers, the inability to use text messaging and lack of Wi-Fi availability.
- Duplicate documentation requirements – Eliminating inefficiencies in documentation methods will allow clinicians to spend more time with patients and also helps with patient flow.
- Poor patient flow – Dealing with a large number of patients moving in and out of the hospital and from one department to another will inevitably lead to patient flow issues.
- Inappropriate hospital admissions and lengths of stay – Practitioners sometimes admit patients to the hospital or keep them longer than necessary because they don’t have an alternative place to send them.
- Incomplete medication reconciliation – One of the reasons hospitals have difficulty with medication reconciliation is that patients are often poor historians when it comes to their medications, which makes it difficult to develop a complete ‘entry’ list.