Air Traffic Control for Homecare?

In 2003, Hartford Hospital, a 864 bed tertiary care hospital in Hartford, CT created a “virtual instrumentation “ software application, better known as a web based dashboard. They did so in order to solve inefficiencies related to use of beds, other resources, provider time, and crowding at choke points along the continuum from the front door to discharge (Rosow, 2003). The bed management dashboard is real-time, enterprise wide, and interacts will all departments throughout the hospital.

Imagine the potential of such a dashboard for homecare. What if we could see a patient’s status ? what if each patient was tracked like a UPS package? And, what if you could know where providers were at any given time?

1. A real time screen display of the admission process, linear in nature, showing how far along the admission work has progressed..has the first visit been completed?, has the OASIS been submitted? Has the POC been approved by the clinical manager? Have the admission documents found their way (signed) and back into the patient’s record?

2. I imagine two lines, one above the other, one for business services, billing status, orders status, authorizations status.

3. What if a GPS system could identify the nearest provider to a new admit’s residence? And, you could make new assignments accordingly?

Seems to me it would be awesome to have a per patient dashboard, with a summary level display for team and branch, etc. There could be a counterpart provider dashboard, showing a virtual view of scheduling and routes. Imagine the possibilities…

Reference:

Rosow, E., Adam, J., Coulombe,K., Race, K., Anderson, R. (2003). Virtual Instrumentation and Real-Time Executive Dashboards. Nursing Administration, 27(1), 58-76.