Congress Abstracts 2006

28

TURNING DISCHARGE DEFICIENCIES INTO THROUGHPUT EFFICIENCY. Dawn Gubanc, MSN, RN, CNAA, BC, Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Cleveland, OH.

Patient throughput is an area of great interest to organizations of all sizes. This poster presentation will review the baseline data of an academic, tertiary care medical center in the Midwestern United States related to discharges accomplished before 12 noon daily.

The poster presentation will then identify strategies used to assess system challenges and will discuss the practice changes implemented to achieve improved outcomes

Interventions included the creation of a discharge planning tool, role clarification, S.W.O.T. analysis, and ultimately the creation of a throughput manager at the unit level.

As a result of this project, we have seen a change in the percentage of oncology/palliative medicine patients discharged before noon. Baseline data before intervention was 5% of our patients discharged before noon. Post implementation of the throughput manager yields 50% of our patients discharged before noon.

Being able to impact patient throughput so significantly has a positive impact on patient flow through out the organization. It allows us to ultimately admit our patients earlier in the day, discharge them earlier in the day. This additionally, impacts patient satisfaction as well as system effectiveness and efficiency