Managing waiting times and production targets
To provide the right care in a timely manner, activities in the hospital’s various departments - like outpatient clinics and ORs - have to be coordinated, and the same goes for specialties and groups of staff (e.g. specialists, nurses and support staff). The Tactical Capacity Planning enables hospitals to manage waiting times and meet production targets by predicting weekly targets, such as weekly patient numbers, waiting lists, and more. The Tactical Capacity Planning can predict how these factors will evolve up to a year into the future, as well as highlighting discrepancies between real and expected figures and suggesting remedies. The Tactical Capacity Planning calculates how alternative schedules would impact production and workloads, using forecasts based on OR capacity plans and physicians’ personal schedules, for example.
Comprehensive tactical planning environment
The Tactical Capacity Planning unlocks this innovative technology for all specialisms and departments. It is a comprehensive tactical planning environment in which plans can be laid down, calculated, analyzed and optimized. The planning horizon is usually set at anywhere from a few
weeks or months to a full year.
The ORTEC Tactical Capacity Planning provides insight into current (realized) performance levels and predictions about future results, as well as tracking waiting list evolution (workload), production, turnover and capacity deployment rates.
Results
The Tactical Capacity Planning takes a fundamentally different approach than existing dashboard solutions that only show results and scheduled appointments and are only capable of making bare-bones forecasts at best. Some results:
- Early forecasting of (year-end) performance and deviations from targets where applicable
- More insight into workloads and patient waiting times
- More and better patient care with the same team by optimizing deployment and cutting down on waste.
- Production ceilings are never exceeded
In practice
Some examples of practical applications:
- Significantly more outpatient consultations with unchanged capacity levels
- Fewer OR cancellations during the summer holidays
- Reduced OR vacancy due to lack of patients on doctor-specific waiting list
- More endoscopies performed
- Organize catch-up care, e.g. for semi-urgent patients following corona peaks
- The ORTEC Tactical Capacity Planning was designed by ORTEC and Rhythm based on implementations of integrated capacity management at hospitals.
