Designing Healthcare Organisations For Excellence: Improving Bed Management Process And Strategies To Reduce The Turn Around Time

Background Bed management in a hospital is the process of ensuring that every bed is used optimally, while also providing quality care and efficient treatment. It involves allocating beds, tracking bed availability, managing patient flow, improving patient care and improving clinical staff efficiency. The process by which patients are admitted against any hospital bed, and when they are discharged and the bills are cleared, the bed is cleaned and allotted to the next patient in line is called bed management. Objectives ➢To understand the process flow of bed management in the hospital ➢To conduct a Time Motion Study for the patients getting discharged ➢To locate the problem areas in the process and give suitable solutions Methods Observation at various levels of the process of bed management (Pharmacy, Billing, TPA, Floors, Front office) Study Frame • Patients getting discharged • HIS (Hospital Information System) • Stakeholders of the system Findings It was observed that incorrect time management and inefficient system usage including communication gaps and delays, manual system updates and housekeeping protocols were the main problem areas in the bed management process. Conclusion Strict Vigilance of the work at the nerve cell and floors is required. The stakeholders were suggested to put ceilings on the number of beds that can be blocked for a day as well as on the time for which these beds are blocked. In addition to these, the stakeholders were also advised to replace manual system updation with some smart solutions