Baptist Health Command Center Improves Access to Needed Care

From the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, Baptist Health identified opportunities to improve its processes for how patients gain access to care. The processes were cumbersome in certain respects, so the Baptist Health Patient Command Center was established in 2022 to improve access to care.

Centralized operation centers, or command centers, are utilized in other industries such as nuclear power, air traffic, and NASA to reduce variability, increase safety, and create highly reliable outcomes. Across Baptist Health, a group of key stakeholders met to determine the ideal location, structure, technology, and facility layout for maximum efficiency.

The Baptist Health Patient Command Center opened in April and has quickly become one of the most valuable assets to the organization for increased access to life-saving care.

The goal of this Command Center, located near the campus of Baptist Health Medical

Center-Little Rock, is to streamline the referral and acceptance process, making it faster, more efficient, and convenient for patients to get to the right place. Operating 24/7 with a staff of nearly 15 employees at any given time, it comprises 22 workstations with visual dashboards for certain metrics and system status across all facilities.

Overall priorities for this year included increasing throughput or delivery, increasing the number of appropriate admissions, and decreasing diversion and delay rates.

By expediting patient transfers, Baptist Health is able to ensure appropriate utilization of resources and provide a multidisciplinary approach by coordinating with physicians, pharmacists, case managers, nurses, and dispatchers.

Additionally, the Command Center is capable of:

„ Single-source coordination and operational sensitivity for acute medical and behavioral health requests for all hospital-based services throughout Baptist Health.

„ Systemwide visibility of bed resources with real-time analytics for rapid decision-making to benefit patients needing immediate care.

„ Centralized EMS dispatch for appropriate transport coordination and shared situational awareness in disaster management situations requiring leverage of system resources.

As a result of progress made toward this initiative, admissions to Baptist Health intensive care units increased from 245 in March to 302 in October, representing a 23% increase. Across the organization in October, Baptist Health had a record number of acute admissions at 1,094 and the second highest number of admissions for behavioral health at 408.

Additionally in 2022, Baptist Health completed two different milestones: 2,646 emergency department to emergency department transfers in less than five minutes and another 1,349 within 10 minutes.

This year also saw the successful coordination of multiple emergent interventional patients, resulting in improved outcomes and lives saved.

In 2023, Baptist Health plans to centralize bed placement, centralize the dispatch of environmental services, initiate remote patient monitoring, and automate the discharge process. Baptist Health also has established goals of creating system visibility for staffed bed capacity and coordinating staff to accommodate patient surge scenarios.

Another aim next year is ease of access and medical guideline development using a mobile application to improve outcomes.