City of Dublin, Ohio USA’s Post

This recent article from Becker’s Hospital Review highlights that 104 rural hospitals have closed since 2005, with another 89 facilities no longer providing inpatient services. Thirty-seven of those 104 closures have occurred since 2020, further demonstrating the amplified financial challenges that rural hospitals face amidst workforce shortages, rising costs and reimbursement issues. The article notes significant policy change is necessary to attract a rural-centric pipeline of health professionals and establish payment methodologies that sustain hospitals in low-volume and safety-net environments. https://lnkd.in/gZGeCMT8 #ruralhealthcare #ruralhealth #ruralhospitals

Transforming Hospital Bed Management: Introducing the Clustered Overflow Configuration. Most hospitals face increasing pressure on their inpatient beds. In our MSOM publication in 2021 (https://lnkd.in/dbnbhkbY), we lay the foundation of a new configuration, which we named the Clustered Overflow Configuration. This configuration aims to strike a balance between specialization and flexibility by partitioning specialties into clusters and allocating a collection of dedicated wards and a single overflow ward to each cluster (see the diagram below). In our recently accepted paper in EJOR (https://lnkd.in/dwGbZJ8f), we propose a heuristic for finding the optimal allocation of a given number of beds considering the full range of configurations, including fully dedicated, fully flexible, wing-formation and earmarking. Using real data, we show that the Clustered Overflow Configuration can create substantial savings (in the sum of patients waiting cost and nursing costs) compared to other configurations. This research not only paves the way for more efficient hospital bed management but also opens avenues for further investigations into optimizing healthcare operations. The potential for enhancing patient care and operational savings is immense, and we are eager to continue exploring these possibilities. I am immensely proud of the contributions these studies make to the field of healthcare operations and am grateful for the collaboration and support from my colleagues @Bahararabzadeh, Nick Sands, @JamesAdams and the data provision by #RoyalSurreyNHSFoundationTrust. #HealthcareOperations #OperationsResearch #EJOR #MSOM #InnovationInHealthcare

It’s estimated that ~700 rural hospitals are at risk of closing in the near future due to financial challenges, with more than half of those potentially closing within the next few years. It's no surprise that most of these at-risk facilities are in the southeast...in Alabama, for example, it's estimated that almost half of rural hospitals in the state are at risk of closing!! Not sure what the answer is, but the situation is obviously very concerning... #Healthcare #RuralHealth #HFMA

Good question. The system isn’t broken it isn’t really even a system. RACFs can’t look after unwell residents (except at end of life!), refer to external services for help with things nurses should be able to carry out given the training and the funding for the care (what goes to the GP for managing the care, what goes to the provider???). It is unsustainable to send residents to hospital or get the paramedics to assess them every time they feel unwell or look a bit off. Nine times out of 10 they go to ED get ‘checked’ and are sent straight back. It’s the same scenario I saw in hospitals 10-15 years ago when nurses would call a MET for everything and the ICU doctors were running around doing what nurses reasonably could be expected to. Clearly aged care nurses need sub acute training and recognition of deterioration, which I do train. Many times residents are sent because the family wants it (don’t trust the home) or for good reason such as need for scanning or higher level care. Sending residents to hospital when they have dementia is hugely disorientating. Funding for Registrars and acute care nurses in aged care would pay for itself by reducing ramping and pressure on EDs that are already nearing breaking point (beyond it in the UK). Extension of Virtual Care Services and other GP led emergency triage would help. Training nurses and allowing them to use clinical judgement would be good though the move is in the opposite direction based on compliance and fear. What do you think? Should RNs in RACF have reasonable acute care skills? Or should they defer to lesser trained paramedics and send to hospital. Should RNs or NPs be able to run IVs etc?

Did you know that #urgentcare centers operated by, or affiliated with, #hospitals and #healthsystems tend to have more locations than independent physician and commercial practices? I just compiled the annual Top 100 list of urgent care operators for publication in JUCM: Journal of Urgent Care Medicine this summer. Data from Experity and National Urgent Care Realty reveals that only 13% of hospital affiliations are single sites vs. 28% of non-hospital operators. Moreover, half of hospital operators have >10 sites vs. 42% of non-hospital operators. And whereas 39% of all UCs are hospital affiliated, 48% of the 100 largest multi-unit operators are hospital-affiliated. In this context, by "hospital-affiliated" I'm referring to UC's either owned and operated by a health system itself (such as the Mayo Clinic pictured), including by an affiliated physician medical group, or is run in an exclusive joint venture by groups like GoHealth Urgent Care that develop UCs solely with hospital partners.

🏥 Hospital finances remain FLAT. October was the third straight month where national hospital operating margins remained at 1.2%. 👇 Key takeaways from the Kaufman Hall flash report: - Hospital performance in October reflects continued stabilization. Operating margins are elevated over pandemic levels and revenue continue to show improvement compared to the previous month. - Emergency department visits declined compared to the previous month. This likely reflects the shift in patient behavior to outpatient care. Organizations need to continue to build strong provider and outpatient networks. - This month there was a decrease in observation patient days. This could be attributed to patient type but also likely reflects increased vigilance of these patients, including the deployment of case managers and use of observation units. 👇 The bottom line: Financial stability is good, and certainly preferable to what we saw last year, but it signals that we are in this new normal for the foreseeable future. Hospitals will have to work smarter with leaner budgets, while continuing to offer excellence in patient care and supporting caregivers. That will be a tough balance to maintain. #hospitals #healthcare #hcmktg #hcldr

703 rural hospitals, over 30% of all rural hospitals in the U.S., are at risk of closure due to financial difficulties. Alarmingly, 360 of these hospitals face immediate risk. This trend has been ongoing for over a decade, exacerbated by recent closures of inpatient services. States with the highest percentages of at-risk hospitals include Connecticut, Kansas, and Vermont. #hospitals #healthsystems https://lnkd.in/g_xKaJTc

This gives us the ability to treat through the entire care continuum providing our clients with a single partner for all things health and wellness. #occupationalhealthandsafety #urgentcare #executivehealth #surgerycenter #highperformance

Today we publish research introducing our new ‘Housing and Healthcare Planning’ model.   This model, developed at the ESRI, combines information on healthcare demand and housing development profiles. It estimates the demand for primary care and acute public hospital healthcare that may arise from new residential developments.    🩺 In a 1,000-home Housing for All development, there is an estimated annual demand for 11,000 GP visits, requiring 1.5 GP whole-time equivalents.   🏠 In a similarly sized public housing development, demand for GPs practices and nurses is higher as supported renters tend to have higher rates of chronic illness and Medical Card and GP visit card coverage.   🏥 For the 1,000-home Housing for All development, there is an estimated annual demand for 300 acute public hospital admissions, necessitating almost 5 fully staffed inpatient beds. Read the fulll report: https://lnkd.in/eaDBcAhB Read key findings: https://lnkd.in/e_mWWtnP #InformedPolicy #ESRIpublications #HousingResearch

Over 2000 Mackay Hospital and Health Service staff care for more than 81,200 people in their busy Emergency Department each year and approximately 271,000 Outpatient appointments. So how did Mackay Base hospital release clinician time spent on document creation in ieMR by 30% to care for patients and improve staff satisfaction? Watch the case study videos to hear from Dr Pieter Nel, Chief Digital Director Medical Services and understand how the Mackay team are releasing time to: - add more complete documentation to the medical record - spend more time with patients and junior doctors increase clinician - satisfaction reduce the risk of burnout or stress for staff. Please find the link in the comments 👇 #clinical #healthcareAI #primarycare #hospital #speechrecognition #hospitalmanagement #doctors