How Effective Is Your Command Center? Three Areas of Improvement to Consider

By Sue Ann Davis

Capacity Center, Bed Management Office, Patient Flow Center, Operational Hub - almost every hospital has one these days, a central location to manage patient flow and operations.  But how effective is your Operational Command center?  My team has assessed many hospitals across the country over the past decade and I've compiled a list of the top issues that can prevent hospitals from having an effective Command Center.

The right roles are in a room together, but they don't collaborate.  I can't tell you how many times I've asked a command center resource "Why do you sit in this location with these other folks?" and received "I don't know" as a response.  The power of an Operational Command Center is being able to quickly adjust as an organization to the changing demands of the day.  If each resource in the command center operates independently without a clear understanding of why they are sitting side by side, they might as well be sitting in different places.

The organization has invested in technology, but can't rely on the data to make decisions.  Although many hospitals have implemented capacity management software, I often find that who, when, and how the software should be used has not been well defined.  This results in additional activities (or in Lean terms, added waste), like phone calls to units, House Supervisor rounds, or bed huddles, to get the latest status of each unit.  And even then, that information is outdated shortly after.  Not having reliable data for decision-making greatly limits the effectiveness of an Operational Command Center.

Potential bottlenecks and hot spots to address are not made visible to the staff.  An effective Operational Command Center not only oversees patient flow but also intervenes to remove bottlenecks.  Finding those bottlenecks can be a manual, labor-intensive process.  For example, does the system tell you if a patient in the Emergency Department has had a clean, ready bed assigned for more than 15 minutes and still has not been transported?  Can you easily tell that a patient is Ready for Discharge and awaiting transportation?  When these types of delays are made apparent to Operational Command Center staff, they can easily intervene and leverage their local partners in the room.

Once you have a true Operational Command Center that promotes open collaboration and provides real-time actionable data to improve patient flow and address bottlenecks, you will see many benefits in all operations across your entire organization.