Rethinking patient flow

Applying the Theory of Constraints (TOC) to healthcare, Flowful pinpoints the relatively few constraints that dictate the system’s overall performance. Addressing these key leverage points is crucial for a breakthrough in patient flow.

Flowful provides leaders with clear, actionable insights into the complex hospital environment, guiding them on where to concentrate their efforts to simultaneously reduce the length of stay for all patient pathways.

It assists leaders and healthcare professionals in answering two vital questions:

1. Of all the things we could improve, which one should we improve first? (Focus)
2. Of all the patients I could work on next, which one should I work on next? (Synchronization)

At its heart is a focused process to ongoing improvement, identifying which tasks and resources frequently cause the most disruptions and delays for the majority of patients.

By prioritizing these areas, healthcare providers can enhance system-wide benefits with minimal effort. Flowful brings transparency to delays, tracking the impact on bed days and lost patient throughput, thus highlighting the cost of not changing.

Flowful integrates real-time patient, bed, and task management features that foster patient-centric care and simplify the workflow for clinical professionals. These features include:

1. Time-based patient plans to visualize patients’ progress in their care journey and outline pending tasks before discharge.
2. Prioritization of patients and tasks to ensure smooth patient flow and prevent delays.
3. Identification of patients who are experiencing delays or at risk of delay, and the underlying causes, facilitating timely intervention.
4. Escalation and resolution of patient and task issues that affect flow.
5. Projections of bed availability.

The goal is to enhance patient satisfaction and alleviate the workload on staff. These features offer clinical staff, diagnostic services, and other resources clear guidance on their duties, minimizing constant interruptions, and allowing more time for patient care.

Flowful equips hospitals with advanced analytics, providing real-time insights into patient flow, and offering new metrics that simplify complex phenomena. It empowers healthcare leaders to pinpoint constraints and missynchronization within hospitals and throughout the entire care continuum, and to predict patient admissions and bed availability. By uncovering crucial data gaps and converting existing data into clear, actionable insights, hospitals can improve their operational decision-making, ensuring that actions are both evidence-based and centered on patient needs.

Flowful features an intuitive dashboard suitable for all organizational levels, along with an in-depth analysis tool that enables leaders and improvement teams to gain a comprehensive understanding of necessary actions to address disruptions and delays.

Flowful’s intuitive design facilitates easy adoption by professionals at all levels, from frontline staff to managers and executives. This reduces the need for extensive training and enables swift integration into daily operations, promoting widespread utilization. The interface presents complex processes and data in a simplified manner, allowing users of all backgrounds to easily understand and take action.

Flowful seamlessly fits into existing IT frameworks and can be deployed either in the cloud or on-premises. It integrates efficiently with current EMR/PAS systems and reduces redundant data entry, thus providing significant insights with minimal data requirements. The blend of user-friendliness, flexibility, and smart design means that Flowful can be rapidly and effortlessly integrated into any healthcare system.