Last year, LeanTaaS joined with the Association of Community Cancer Centers (ACCC) to explore nursing directors’ and other operational leaders’ perspectives on the current state of cancer programs and practice operations. The survey’s goal was to assess how AI and other technologies could best improve efficiencies for both patients and staff at infusion centers, given limits on resources and growing demands for care.
Covering mainly infusion centers with 10-30 total chairs, throughout community and academic cancer programs as well as private oncology practices, the original survey found three pressing operational challenges commonly cited among respondents who wanted to improve their center’s efficiency:
- Overall resource constraints in infusion centers
This creates a roadblock to patient access and makes accommodating patient volumes from local populations difficult.
- Staffing shortages and the burnout of existing staff
These issues cause, exacerbate, and prolong each other, creating a vicious cycle where turnover of burnt out nurses and other staff places further pressure on remaining staff.
- Difficulty accessing the data needed in the EHR
The lack of access to key scheduling, appointment, and operational data makes center leadership unable to identify specific bottlenecks or areas to improve chair utilization or staff assignments.
Now in their journal Oncology Issues, ACCC has explored the survey and its impact in depth.
The Oncology Issues article “Machine Learning and Predictive Analytics Solution Transforms Infusion Center Operations”, discusses the stopgaps infusion center leadership have created to address these issues in the past, including tracking operational information in spreadsheets, and the new solutions unlocked by cutting edge AI technology. Leaders from University of Alabama at Birmingham and Monument Health Cancer Care Institute describe their own experiences and achievements deploying technology across their centers to transform their operational efficiency.
Learn how infusion centers are now using AI-driven tools like iQueue for Infusion Centers to glean key insights from their data to create smooth schedules that maximize the capacity of their resources, optimize and empower staff, and unlock patient access. View the article here.
