Using real-time demand capacity management to improve hospitalwide patient flow

The Joint Commission's accreditation standard on managing patient flow, effective January 2005, served as a call to action for hospitals, yet many hospitals still lack the processes and structures to admit or transfer patients to an inpatient bed on a timely basis. In 2007 the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) at Shadyside, a 526-bed tertiary care hospital, began testing and implementing real-time demand capacity management (RTDC) at an initial pilot site. The hospital had identified improved patient flow as a strategic goal in 2002, but a series of patient flow projects failed to result in improvement. IMPLEMENTING RTDC: Standard processes for the four RTDC steps-Predicting Capacity, Predicting Demand, Developing a Plan, and Evaluating a Plan--and standard structures for unit bed huddles and the hospital bed meetings were developed. The neurosurgery (NS) service line's ICU and stepdown unit were designated as the first pilot sites, but work was quickly spread to other units.

Improvements were achieved and have been sustained through early 2011 for all measures, including (1) the unit-based reliability of discharge predictions; (2) overnight holds in the postanesthesia care unit, a problem eliminated two months after RTDC work began; (3) the percentage of patients who left without being seen (LWBS), routinely < 0.5% by May 2008; (5) the emergency department median length of stay for admitted patients, routinely < 4 hours after March 2008; and (6) aggregate length of stay (ALOS), generally maintained at < 5.75 days.

RTDC represents a promising approach to improving hospitalwide patient flow. Its four steps, integrated into current bed management processes, are not an add-on to the work needing to be accomplished everyday.