Making the Most Out of Diagnostic Resources

While hospitals and health systems are always looking for pathways to operational improvement, the sub-optimal use of diagnostic resources remains a common, yet often overlooked source of waste and inefficiency.

With rising costs of delivering care, making the most out of your diagnostic resources is not just a goal but a necessity. While hospitals and health systems are always looking for pathways to operational improvement, the sub-optimal use of diagnostic resources remains a common, yet often overlooked source of waste and inefficiency. This misallocation leads to a multitude of problems, including increased patient length of stay, bottlenecks in patient flow, care collisions, and an overall decline in the patient and staff experience.

At the core of this issue is the misconception that these problems are solely due to volume. In reality, operational inefficiencies are likely what’s limiting your diagnostic capacity. Our mission is to guide you through effective operational solutions that help you maximize the use of your limited diagnostic resources. The results of this improvement are nothing short of transformative: increased diagnostic capacity, more efficient patient throughput, on-time discharges, improved profitability, and happier patients and staff.

Identifying Your Challenges:

If you're dissatisfied with any aspect of your diagnostic process, the first step is to identify what's causing the issue. This is where the right team of experts can make all the difference. A third-party partner can provide an objective view of the situation and help align your team towards a common goal.

For instance, consider a scenario where a Care Logistics partner was grappling with excessively long MRI wait times. The issue seemed insurmountable until our experts helped the health system identify their goals, target their bottlenecks, and create a new path forward for the delivery of MRIs. Often, breaking out of the status quo is the key to progress. One of the most effective actions we recommend is organizing Lean events where teams can gain perspective, identify challenges, and align on a path to overcome them.

During these events, it's essential to illuminate areas of concern through the following steps:

  • Gaining a Holistic Perspective

    Dissect the entire diagnostic process from start to finish, ensuring that your team sees the bigger picture. This enables them to understand how their roles impact the larger process and helps identify inefficiencies.

  • Agreeing on a Shared "Ideal"

    Decide on the ideal diagnostic process that aligns with the common goal. Get input from various leaders to determine this ideal, and flag points that prevent you from achieving it.

  • Prioritizing Solution Implementation

    Identify and prioritize the sources of inefficiency based on impact and ease of resolution. High-impact issues that can be remedied fairly easily should be addressed first.

By aligning your team on these points, you can develop realistic goals and a plan to achieve them.

Implementing Your Solution Plan:

Understanding your challenges is one step; overcoming them is another journey entirely. There are a wide array of solutions that you can implement to improve your process, but the most effective center around improving operational efficiency. Some solutions, such as the CareEdge™ platform, employ technology to provide system-wide visibility, streamline administrative tasks, and enable informed decision-making. Others are more process and protocol-based, and start with establishing a new mindset and methodology. Some of the most effective solutions employ both technology and process to solve operational challenges.

Through partnerships with Care Logistics, organizations have successfully developed and executed realistic plans for operational improvement, thereby remedying issues in diagnostic areas. These plans might include technological implementation, but also introduce new concepts like daily huddles that establish priorities or take measures to facilitate improved communication. By maintaining a holistic understanding and implementing the lessons learned during Lean events, these initiatives have delivered significant positive results.

The Importance of Diagnostic Stewardship

One of the most effective tools in your kit is diagnostic stewardship. It focuses on optimizing the use of diagnostic tests in a hospital setting, ensuring that the right tests are performed at the right time with the right interpretation. Ignoring diagnostic stewardship can lead to crowded schedules, long wait times, unreimbursed testing, and waste of valuable diagnostic resources.

Operational solutions can encourage diagnostic stewardship by providing real-time data analytics and insights into diagnostic test scheduling and utilization. By identifying patterns of overutilization, such as duplicate testing or inpatient tests that could have been done in an outpatient setting, healthcare providers can implement strategies to optimize diagnostic testing, resulting in improved efficiency and capacity. This also helps avoid unnecessary inpatient testing, which can lengthen patient stays and overwhelm testing schedules. Technology, such as the CareEdge™ platform, supports diagnostic stewardship by prioritizing patients for testing.

By implementing diagnostic stewardship practices and technology, hospitals can balance responsible diagnostic resource usage with high-quality care.

Achieving Dramatic Results

Properly managing diagnostic resources not only benefits a specific diagnostic area but positively impacts the entire system through a ripple effect. One Care Logistics partner achieved remarkable results. They went from patients waiting several days for an MRI to over 85% of patients receiving their MRI within 24 hours. The transformation was nearly instantaneous after improvements were implemented. These same lessons can be applied to other diagnostic areas, helping to match resources with demand. In fact, this health system is already applying similar solutions to other diagnostic areas such as CT to expand the success of the initiative.

This health system partner is just one example of what organizations can achieve with the proper utilization of diagnostic resources and the guidance of a trusted partner. Join us on this journey to make the most out of your diagnostic resources and transform your healthcare operations for the better. Together, we can build a brighter, more efficient future for healthcare operations.

Ready to Make the Most Out of Your Diagnostic Resources?

Get in touch with one of our experts to learn more about operational solutions that can maximize the potential of your resources.