ORLANDO, Fla. - AdventHealth has opened a 12,000-square-foot operations center that uses artificial intelligence to coordinate patient care among its eight hospitals in Florida.
Think of the expertise, coordination and manpower NASA needs to blast a rocket into space. The health system's mission control operates on the principles of precise timing, too, but the goal is to maximize efficiency in health care.
"We were experiencing patients that were waiting long times in our ED," said Penny Porteous, the executive director of mission control at AdventHealth. "We had delays in our procedures and operating rooms because we couldn't get our beds turned over and get them placed into in patient beds."
Now, using new technology developed along with GE Healthcare, a team of nurses, EMS and flight dispatchers and transport technicians man the center 24 hours a day.
"If you were a patient, the last place you want to be is waiting," Porteous continued.
Each tile represents a patient, someone who has been admitted to the emergency department, or who will need a bed, or a transfer. The technology allows staff to see openings in real time, across the eight facilities in three Florida counties.
"Instead of being reactive, we can be proactive," said Dr. Sanjay Pattani, the mission control's medical director.
Administrators said so far, mission control has enabled the system to drop wait times from admittance to finding a bed by one full hour. Instead of turning patients away during peak times, AdventHealth admits 15 more patients a month.
"This is just the beginning," Pattani said. "We have started something that will continuously evolve."
AdventHealth was not the first U.S. hospital to adopt the mission control centers. Johns Hopkins and Oregon Health Hospital were among the first, and 10 other hospital systems will be soon be implementing the command center approach.
