Children’s Mercy Kansas City and GE Healthcare have partnered to launch the Patient Progression Hub, a hospital operations center that uses AI, predictive analytics, and real-time data to improve care coordination and progression. The hub provides a video wall that serves as a command center for monitoring patient flow and identifying potential issues, allowing care teams to take action before problems arise. The system has enabled Children’s Mercy to manage bed placement, address delays, and streamline discharge processes. The hub is expected to improve outcomes and enhance patient care across the health system.
Children’s Mercy Kansas City and GE HealthCare have collaborated to launch the Patient Progression Hub, a hospital operations center designed to leverage artificial intelligence (AI), predictive analytics, and real-time data to enhance care progression and coordination. The goal of this technology is to improve care access, forecast patient demand, streamline patient flow, optimize discharge planning, and address staffing needs.
The Patient Progression Hub is designed to serve as a “command center” to help Children’s Mercy coordinate daily patient care using a video wall with customized analytics tiles to support the monitoring and management of patient flow throughout the health system. The hub uses AI to identify potential issues and alert care teams before such problems arise. The health system has been able to enact several improvements since the hub’s deployment, including managing and centralizing bed placement, improving bed assignment workflows, prioritizing timely bed placement and transfers, addressing potential delays, such as how long patients wait in the emergency department before being assigned an inpatient bed, improving staffing through AI-based predictions of the patient census and demand levels up to 48 hours in advance, and streamlining the discharge process by using real-time data and predictive analytics to track patient journeys.
Jodi Coombs, RN, executive vice president and chief operating officer, of Children’s Mercy, explained in the press release that “before implementation, the organization relied on manual processes and often retrospective data to understand patient census and anticipate discharges. Now we have visibility into operations across the entire system to make faster and smarter complex decisions as soon as vital workflows change. The Patient Progression Hub journey enables endless possibilities for using real-time data to drive actions that deliver excellent patient care and supports our team members.”
The press release notes that team members are co-located within the hub’s space to bolster communication and collaboration, tear down barriers to care, and improve patient and employee satisfaction.
Dr. Robert Lane, executive vice president, and physician-in-chief at Children’s Mercy said, “Most patients and families won’t even know the command center exists, but they will significantly feel the impact – less waiting around for a bed and getting discharged quicker so they can go home that much sooner. Making better-informed decisions leads to better outcomes for our patients, families, and staff.”
Other health systems are also using real-time analytics and other advanced technologies to support pediatric care. In an interview with HealthITAnalytics in October, Santiago Borasino, MD, medical director of the cardiovascular intensive care unit at Children’s of Alabama, discussed how the health system is tackling patient deterioration, addressing extubation readiness, and leveraging code event reviews using real-time analytics in its cardiovascular ICU as part of its ICU Liberation strategy.
Children’s Mercy’s Patient Progression Hub is a significant development in the healthcare industry, particularly in pediatrics. Hospitals across the world have been using AI, predictive analytics, and real-time data to improve patient outcomes and streamline healthcare delivery. As healthcare providers continue to incorporate technology into their daily operations, patients will benefit from faster and more effective care.
