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The Affordable Care Act Will Provide Health Insurance Coverage

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The Affordable Care Act will provide health insurance coverage to an expected 32 million people.1 Health care organizations must try to use their current resources competently and capitalize on inpatient bed capacity. Dealing with capacity and high census in hospitals and emergency departments (ED) is a universal problem.1 Hospitals need to enhance their capacity to meet the goal of keeping their doors open at all the times for their patients and community. However, high cost approaches like expanding capacity with more space, staffing, technology and care givers impend the expected bottom line benefits of giving more health services to patients.3
Capacity management in healthcare facilities have been well-known areas of focus in…show more content…
The additional revenues that were collected due to increase in ICU capacity by 20 beds enhanced the total ED revenues by 10%.4 The efficiency of care delivery is decreased when patients are diverted to other hospitals, they have to wait for long period to receive care or if they are placed on the floors where they do not belong. This is seen often due to delay in discharging patients.3 These delays and inefficiencies are the primary cause of decreased satisfaction among patients, their families, hospital employees, and physicians. They also result in avoidable increases in patient length-of-stay, reduced quality of care, and lost or diminished hospital revenue.3
Hospitals need to measure performance in key areas that affect patient flow and capacity, and identify the drivers of capacity constraints and key opportunities for performance improvement.2 “Identifying real drivers of capacity constraints and key opportunities for performance improvement can be achieved by: Monitoring how many cases are being diverted from the hospital, understanding how systems and tools are functioning for patient admission, discharge, and transfer, determining the efficiency of activities such as bed tracking and control, patient transportation, housekeeping, and care delivery.3”
Direct admit diversion is
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