Overview
The challenge
Efforts to reduce bed turnaround time have historically focused on onerous—and often unsustainable—campaigns to convince physicians of the importance of discharging patients earlier in the day, ignoring non-clinical contributors.
The organization
Cedars Sinai Medical Center is a 952-bed teaching hospital located in Los Angeles, California, US. They experienced bed turnaround delays partially associated with understaffing of housekeeping at peak admission, discharge, and transfer times.
The approach
Cedars Sinai created a discharge team of support services staffed at peak times—admissions, discharges, and transfers—to concentrate onbed turnaround.
The result
The dedicated discharge team decreased average time to clean a roomby 40 percent—from 75 minutes to 45 minutes.