How Fred Hutchinson "Fred Hutch" Cancer Center Used Predictive Analytics to Save Up to 4 Hours Daily on Assignment Scheduling

The capacity constraints and safety concerns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic forced infusion centers to re-examine their approach to operational and staffing challenges, and leverage cost-effective technology to solve them. In doing so many centers discovered long-term solutions that level-loaded schedules to accommodate higher patient volumes safely while streamlining the processes of scheduling appointments and assigning nurses. 

Fred Hutchinson “Fred Hutch” Cancer Center serves a diverse patient population with a heavy focus on clinical trials, and is an NCI Designated Comprehensive Cancer Center of the Pacific Northwest. Within its infusion centers, one of Fred Hutch Cancer Center’s largest pre-COVID pain points was a manual, handwritten, nursing assignment process, which took on average four hours to complete and made managing changes and cancellations overly complicated. Other challenges included long wait times for patients, midday peaks in scheduling, and staff burnout. At the peak of the pandemic, these grew to encompass staffing limitations, relocation of administrative staff off-site, and expanding hours and services to deal with the surge. 

In this session, Fred Hutch Cancer Center’s Patient Access Operations Manager discusses how the center leveraged the predictive analytics in LeanTaaS’ iQueue for Infusion Centers solution to utilize a unified platform for assignments and create “flattened” schedules that reduced wait times for patients and supported consistent shifts for nurses. Learn how Fred Hutch Cancer Center used the technology to maximize patient access, enhanced patient safety and improved staff satisfaction while navigating through the pandemic.

Viewers of this webinar will be able to: 

• Understand the operational and staffing challenges that cancer centers faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the ways in which technology was leveraged to solve these challenges
• Identify the specific ways that Fred Hutch Cancer Center maximized patient access, enhanced patient safety, and improved staff satisfaction during the pandemic
• Discover the potential benefits of leveraging technology to address operational and staffing challenges in cancer centers, particularly in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic

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