Maloney Christopher G, Wolfe Douglas, Gesteland Per H, Hales Joe W, Nkoy Flory L
Department of Pediatrics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA.
AMIA Annu Symp Proc. 2007 Oct 11;2007:493-7.
Hospital bed demands sometimes exceed capacity, leading to delays in patient admissions, transfers and cancellations of surgical procedures. Effective strategies must be in place for an efficient use of existing beds. Establishing such strategies at academic hospitals poses serious challenges. We developed and implemented a web-based software application called "Patient Tracker" to manage the discharge process, minimize delays in admission and reduce surgical procedure cancellations. We also tested the effectiveness of the software on the work flow by comparing outcomes between the pre-implementation control group (2002-2003) and the post-implementation experimental group (2003-2006). Following the implementation of the software, the number of cancelled surgical procedures decreased (120 vs. 12, p<0.01). During the same period, the average number of inpatient admissions increased (5725 vs. 6120), and the median emergency department LOS decreased (247 vs. 232, p<0.01).
医院病床需求有时会超出容量，导致患者入院、转院延迟以及外科手术取消。必须制定有效的策略以高效利用现有病床。在学术医院制定此类策略面临严峻挑战。我们开发并实施了一款名为“患者追踪器”的基于网络的软件应用程序，以管理出院流程，尽量减少入院延迟并减少外科手术取消情况。我们还通过比较实施前对照组（2002 - 2003年）和实施后实验组（2003 - 2006年）的结果，测试了该软件在工作流程方面的有效性。软件实施后，取消的外科手术数量减少（120例对12例，p<0.01）。在同一时期，住院患者入院的平均数量增加（5725例对6120例），急诊科住院时间中位数减少（247天对232天，p<0.01）。
