Efficient patient throughput across the acute care journey is critical for enhancing healthcare outcomes and operational effectiveness. Ensuring patients are treated in the most appropriate care setting at every stage of their journey prevents unnecessary delays that can compromise recovery and limit hospital capacity. Poor throughput, such as delayed discharges and prolonged stays in acute care, exacerbates challenges for both patients and hospitals. However, artificial intelligence (AI) presents an opportunity to address these inefficiencies by reorganising processes, improving coordination and optimising resource management.
The Challenges of Inefficient Throughput
Inefficient patient throughput can have wide-ranging consequences, affecting clinical outcomes, patient experiences and hospital operations. When patients remain in acute care settings longer than necessary due to delays in accessing skilled nursing or rehabilitation facilities, their recovery is often slowed down. Acute care teams may not be equipped to provide the post-acute care that these patients require, leading to delayed rehabilitation and suboptimal results. This is detrimental to the patient and limits hospital capacity, as beds remain occupied by those who should have progressed to the next stage of care.
The resulting bottlenecks force hospitals to deny admission to new patients with acute needs, further straining resources. From a financial perspective, the implications are substantial. Hospitals incur significant costs—often exceeding €2,871 (£2,400) per day—when patients exceed their Diagnosis Related Group (DRG) classification’s recommended length of stay. These costs are unreimbursed, creating a financial burden. Furthermore, for a 425-bed hospital, reducing the average patient stay by even one day could generate nearly €19 million (£16 million) in additional annual revenue.
Avoidable barriers frequently underlie these inefficiencies. Common challenges include delayed discharge orders, waiting for prescriptions or transportation and prior authorisation processes for transfers to other care facilities. Such barriers often result from fragmented workflows and misaligned communication. Addressing these inefficiencies requires hospitals to implement coordinated strategies and eliminate unnecessary delays.
AI as a Solution to Throughput Challenges
Artificial intelligence offers transformative potential in addressing patient throughput challenges. While clinical applications of AI often capture public attention, its use in optimising administrative workflows provides more immediate benefits. AI can enhance coordination, predict patient needs and reorganise resource allocation at every stage of the acute care journey, from triage and admission through to discharge.
One of AI’s greatest strengths lies in its predictive capabilities. By analysing real-time and historical data, AI can anticipate bed availability, forecast discharge timelines and prioritise patients based on their clinical urgency. This data-driven approach replaces traditional "first in, first out" models with systems that assess and allocate resources based on medical necessity. For example, a hospital could use AI to identify patients most likely to be discharged within the next 24 hours, allowing for better planning of incoming admissions.
AI also improves communication and coordination between hospital departments by integrating workflows and providing actionable insights. Predictive analytics can highlight potential backlogs in telemetry or surgical units, enabling proactive measures to avoid resource bottlenecks. Additionally, AI-driven automation reduces hospital staff's administrative burden by managing tasks such as coordinating patient transfers, generating discharge summaries and processing prior authorisations. This allows staff to focus on higher-value responsibilities, improving overall efficiency.
Integrating AI for Real-Time Care Orchestration
AI must be smoothly integrated into hospital workflows and systems to maximise its benefits. Even the most advanced technologies are of little value if they cannot be implemented effectively or are too complex for staff to use. Successful integration requires AI platforms to be user-friendly, provide actionable insights and align with a hospital’s existing digital infrastructure.
AI excels in optimising discharge processes, a critical phase of patient throughput. By analysing electronic health records (EHRs), insurance data and provider performance trends, AI can recommend the most suitable post-acute care facilities for patients. This significantly reduces the time case managers spend on manual tasks, such as contacting multiple providers for availability. Additionally, automated systems can fast-track approvals for patient transfers, minimising delays and ensuring care continuity.
Hospitals that adopt AI-driven workflow enhancements experience benefits that go beyond operational efficiency. AI's predictive and prescriptive capabilities enable improved resource allocation, reduced length of stay, faster recovery times, and better clinical outcomes. For example, hospitals can use AI to automate accepting specific transfer cases based on predefined criteria, significantly reducing delays and expediting patient care.
Hospitals can also anticipate future needs by using AI to orchestrate real-time care. For instance, predictive modelling can forecast bed demand based on trends in patient admissions, planned discharges and seasonal variations in care requirements. This enables better preparedness and resource planning, reducing strain on hospital staff and facilities.
Optimising patient throughput is essential for balancing clinical outcomes, hospital efficiency and financial sustainability. Addressing avoidable barriers and leveraging AI technologies allows hospitals to transform the acute patient journey into a seamless, data-driven process. Predictive analytics, automation and real-time care orchestration ensure patients receive timely and appropriate care while freeing up resources for new admissions. With strategic implementation and integration, AI provides hospitals with powerful tools to overcome bottlenecks, rationalise workflows and deliver better care at every stage of the patient journey.
Source: HIT Consultant
Image Credit: iStock
