How a Data-Driven Command Center Can Improve ED Outcomes

AdventHealth's data-driven command center is allowing the health system to improve emergency department outcomes through bed capacity management.

Challenges with high occupancies and staffing shortages have led to patient bottlenecks that significantly impact Emergency Departments. EDs are an integral ‘front door’ to the hospital and patient throughput delays lead to increased numbers of ED patients being boarded or leaving without care – both scenarios that contribute to patient safety issues. 

Florida-based AdventHealth is turning to artificial intelligence (AI) and real-time analytics to address these challenges. It has deployed a data-driven command center known as Mission Control to assist with capacity management and improve outcomes in the ED and beyond. 

 “The command center enables the health system to match a patient’s acuity and level of care needs with the location of an appropriate bed in real time,” said Sanjay Pattani, MD, emergency medicine physician and associate chief medical officer of AdventHealth Mission Control.

Prior to Mission Control, handoff processes were done manually – an enormous burden for a health system that needs to track 2,400 to 2,600 patients throughout their care journeys daily. The deployment of Mission Control enabled a transition from manual to streamlined capacity management.

 “It used to be where we would independently try to figure out how we could accommodate that patient in an overcrowded hospital or find a place somewhere else in our sister hospitals,” Pattani stated. “Now, Mission Control [connects and coordinates] the care for that patient at a physician level, at a nursing level, and at a patient level. So, to the patient, it's all seamless. Connecting that patient care at the point of care and continuing that communication stream is a vital component of Mission Control.”

The command center also helps improve care progression. Mission Control identifies deviations from defined protocols and potentially missed or delayed care. Tracking these data points and surfacing possible barriers to the progression of care can help with care escalation, oversight, and efficiency across the organization, explained Pattani.