Success Stories

Baptist Health Arkansas Increases Patient Transfers by 23%

6% Increase in admissions

25% Reduction in opportunity days

34% Reduction in GMLOS variance

32% Reduction in discharge processing time

Summary

Baptist Health Arkansas, a leading healthcare system dedicated to serving communities across the state, operates 10 acute-care hospitals ranging from 25 to 827 licensed beds. Despite implementing a system-wide operations command center to improve patient access, the organization faced challenges in achieving centralized operational efficiency. Disparate processes across individual hospitals created bottlenecks and limited the ability to standardize workflows, hindering system-wide coordination and timely patient care.

Profile

10 acute-care hospitals

~2,500 licensed beds system-wide

11,000+ employees system-wide

Epic® EHR

Problem

Inconsistent discharge planning, lack of data transparency, and siloed decision-making presented significant operational challenges. The organization sought a partner to unify and streamline processes, implement AI-driven automation, and improve patient access to shift from a reactive to a proactive decision-making model.

Baptist Health and LeanTaaS targeted three key initiatives to create additional capacity and better manage access across the entire system:

Enhance care progression with precise discharge predictions
Improve discharge velocity through cross-team alignment
Enable proactive capacity protocols and bottleneck resolution

Solution

Baptist Health implemented LeanTaaS’ iQueue for Inpatient Flow, starting with the flagship Little Rock and North Little Rock hospitals and the command center, followed by the Conway and Fort Smith campuses within the first year.

Baptist Health leveraged iQueue’s advanced discharge date predictions and real-time visibility into patient status, which supported more precise planning during daily huddles and reduced barriers to timely discharges. By integrating data-driven insights and escalation alerts, they standardized care transitions, leading to a 34% reduction in GMLOS variance and a 25% reduction in opportunity days.

To streamline and align patient discharge practices, Baptist Health utilized iQueue’s forecasts and predictive analytics to foster collaboration between teams. Shared dashboards and automated escalations created a unified understanding of discharge priorities, enabling more efficient planning and reducing discharge processing time by 32%. Early discharge practices improved, with order entry before 11am increasing by 11% and before 2pm by 14%.

To resolve bottlenecks and capacity constraints across highimpact areas like the ED and PACU, Baptist Health leveraged iQueue’s forecasting, automation, and alerting capabilities to establish a single source of truth for capacity protocols across the network. This consolidation provided real-time visibility and collaboration across previously siloed hospitals and the command center. Automated alerts empowered leadership to address flow constraints and manage protocols for critical services like ambulance and helicopter transfers. This approach resulted in a 23% increase in transfers and a 13% reduction in transfer decline, significantly improving system-wide flow.

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