CASE STUDY
CLIENT: Children’s Hospital of New York New York, NY
Testing different room utilization strategies allows for the optimization of patient throughput. An urban, pediatric hospital, Children’s Hospital of New York serves thousands of patients daily. Recently, in its continuous effort to improve service quality, this pediatric care facility hired Array to analyze potential throughput options for a new clinical space. The new space was expected to house three existing clinics, currently operating in three separate parts of the building. SERVICE: Transformation
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
METHOD: Throughput Analysis
The Children’s Hospital of New York (CHoNY) faced a tough situation—combining three separate clinics into one space. The architect performed an initial feasibility study to determine the maximum amount of space available for the desired renovation. The proposed number of exam rooms that could fit in the space was
Challenge
smaller than the staff expected could support the three clinics once combined.
A new clinical space needed to house three existing clinics currently operating in three separate parts of the building. The goal was to reduce patient waiting times and determine how many exam rooms were necessary to support the growing patient population.
Array’s Healthcare Systems Engineer observed the clinic to understand how patients flow through the current system, and worked with staff to discover their ideal patient flow. We worked with hospital staff for two weeks to develop and use a simple time study form to capture each major step in the patient care process. Each piece of data played an important role in creating a simulation model. Array worked closely with CHoNY staff to ensure the simulation model ran just like the actual system. We presented the staff with two options for patient throughput. In the
Solution
first, the three clinics operated separately, but in the same space. Each had dedicated exam rooms that were not shared among the clinics. The second allowed the three
Observing workflow across all three clinics revealed that, despite serving different patient populations, operating processes were very similar. Array developed a simulation model to test various patient throughput scenarios. This model proved that sharing resources improved patient throughput and satisfaction, while also optimizing resource utilization.
clinics to share all exam rooms. In this model, the rooms closest to the front of the clinic were always used first. After seeing how patient waiting time drastically decreased when physicians shared exam rooms, minimizing the need for waiting room space and optimizing the number of necessary exam rooms, the staff was able to make critical decisions about the exam rooms, waiting and support spaces. The simulation results allowed CHoNY more flexibility in its planning so renovations would not be necessary in the near future.
PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS
3
CLINICS COMBINED
2
PATIENT THROUGHPUT OPTIONS
2
wks
OBSERVATION DATA COMBINED WITH EMR