It’s hard to imagine a more stressed sector than healthcare providers. All healthcare delivery organizations have been facing on-going pressures to raise quality, reduce costs, and increase revenues in an environment of reimbursement constraints, demographic shifts, and accelerating technological change. New types of competition are emerging, including physician collaborators-turned-competitors that used to be key patient referral sources. And now patients are asserting themselves in decision-making, expecting more transparency to clinical and economic data.

Unless you have a lot of empty beds, improving patient throughput is a key to successfully managing many of these pressures. The stakes are very high: it’s too expensive to invest in more bricks and mortar without first maximizing patient throughput; and, your system may be bleeding several million desperately needed dollars due to throughput inefficiencies.