New DECRH ‘command centre’ improving patient care, experience through optimized hospital patient flow

(FREDERICTON) – The addition of a new, specialized ‘command centre’ that brings key personnel together in a single working space to ensure optimal patient flow at Horizon’s Dr. Everett Chalmers Regional Hospital (DECRH) is improving the admission and discharge process for inpatients.

This dedicated space is allowing the hospital’s discharge planners, patient flow and bed access coordinators and liaisons from the New Brunswick Extra-Mural Program to physically work together in a central location in the hospital to better manage inpatient capacity and provide optimized control and decision-making related to bed allocation and patient flow.

Improving patient flow is one of the Horizon’s four Critical Action Priorities, and this initiative reflects the organization’s commitment to enhancing and optimizing the way patients move through our facilities from admission to discharge.

“Ensuring efficient, consistent patient flow is critical to hospital operations and the delivery of patient care and has a direct impact on areas such as access to surgeries and Emergency Department (ED) wait times,” said Greg Doiron, VP Clinical, Horizon Health Network. “This innovative model will improve the experience for our patients by ensuring those who need a bed are able to receive one as quickly and efficiently as possible.

“By strengthening our bed management processes and harnessing our internal expertise, this is allowing us to make better decisions and is helping to ensure that we are getting the most efficient use out of every single inpatient bed within our hospital.”

Although the command centre is in its early stages, the patient flow team is seeing early results, including efficiencies related to inpatient admission and discharge. The centre will continue to evolve to include the addition of state-of-the-art equipment and technology which will provide real time dashboard analytics that will lead to accelerated decision making and, ultimately, more coordinated care for patients who access hospital services.

Prior to establishing the command centre, the different personnel involved in bed management and discharge planning worked in separate areas of the hospital, with decisions often made through meetings, phone calls and manual reports.

By co-locating these experts in a central space, they now have the ability to simply engage in direct, face-to-face communication and daily, in-person meetings that will help inform optimal bed management decision-making, and ultimately improve the patient experience.

Horizon has a plan to improve health care in New Brunswick. Our plan is focused on retention and recruitment efforts and improving the overall patient experience by addressing patient flow and access to services. Further details about Horizon’s four priority areas are available at HorizonNB.ca. This initiative also supports the Government of New Brunswick’s provincial health plan, Stabilizing Health Care: An Urgent Call to Action

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