Distributed situation awareness: a health-system approach to assessing and designing patient flow management.

Patient flow management is a system-wide process but many healthcare providers do not integrate multiple departments into the process to minimise the time between treatments or medical services for maximum patient throughput. This paper presents a case study of applying Distributed Situation Awareness (DSA) to characterise system-wide patient flow management and identify opportunities for improvements in a healthcare system. This case study employed a three-part method of data elicitation, extraction, and representation to investigate DSA.

A Blended Transfer and Communications Center: Designing a State-of-the-Art Mission Control.

Health systems frequently are challenged by barriers to patient flow and transfer intake processes. To achieve the goals of seamless entry of patients into the health system, coordination of the safest, most appropriate transport of these patients, and efficient management of hospital throughput needs, our tertiary health system created a central transfer and communications center. From the design of the center's physical space to the collaborative education efforts, the immediate synergies created by this new "Mission Control" model impacted throughput and customer service.