ORLANDO, Fla. (Ivanhoe Newswire) – AdventHealth System in Florida has opened a 12,000 square foot operations center that uses artificial intelligence to coordinate patient care among its eight Florida hospitals.
Think of the expertise, coordination and manpower NASA needs to blast a rocket into space. This Mission Control operates on the principles of precise timing, too-but the goal here is to maximize efficiency in health care.
Penny Porteous, Executive Director of Mission Control at AdventHealth, told Ivanhoe, “We were experiencing patients that were waiting long times in our ED. We had delays in our procedures and operating rooms because we couldn’t get our beds turned over and get them placed into in patient beds.”
Now, using new technology developed along with GE Healthcare, a team of nurses, EMS and flight dispatchers and transport technicians man the center, 24 hours a day.
“If you were a patient, the last place you want to be is waiting,” Porteous continued.
Each of these tiles represents a patient- someone who has been admitted to the emergency department, or who will need a bed, or a transfer. The technology allows staff to see openings in real time, across the eight facilities in three Florida counties.
“Instead of being reactive we can be proactive,” Sanjay Pattani, Medical Director of Mission Control, said.
Administrators say so far, Mission Control has enabled the system to drop wait times from admittance to finding a bed by one full hour. Instead of turning patients away during peak times, AdventHealth admits 15 more patients a month.
“This is just the beginning. We have started something that will continuously evolve,” Pattani explained.
A healthcare trend that is cutting edge- and saving time.
AdventHealth was not the first U.S. hospital to adopt the mission control centers. Johns Hopkins and Oregon Health Hospital were among the first, and ten other hospital systems will be soon be implementing the command center approach.
Contributors to this news report include: Cyndy McGrath, Producer; Keon Broadnax; Assistant Producer; Roque Correa, Videographer and Editor.