Utilisation improvement plans for avoidable hospital delays

Abstract

Providing optimal healthcare in the inpatient settings inevitably involves specific management strategies to keep costs at bay. While prices appear to drive the high-cost trends in the healthcare system with no feasible solution on the horizon, the overutilisation of services and goods worsens this scenario. Managing the length of stay and avoiding hospital delays are strategies essential to controlling clinical operating costs. Hospitals run software suites, specifically designed to capture and report on delays. Without departmental action plans, however, these strategies do not generate sustainable and continuous improvement. This paper complements the topic of avoidable hospital delays (AHDs) by describing the use of avoidable delay tracking systems and contributes to the body of knowledge with the development of utilisation improvement plans based on the type of trending AHDs. It also proposes splitting AHDs into clinical and non-clinical delays to better elucidate the type of action plans required to resolve these issues. The next step points to the development of clinical protocol and guidelines specific for AHDs as well as gathering indirect and direct data to quantify the weight of AHDs in hospital profits.