Healthcare Operations: Challenges and Solutions

Healthcare Operations

Introduction
PATA stands for Pre Admission Testing Area. PATA is primarily the sick person clinic, at
Massachusetts General Hospital. It is liable for managing a pre-operative assessment for the
surgical patient prior to their procedures. PATA is a collective unit of MIT Sloan student and
faculty, and MGH clinics and organizational staff. PATA was suffering from incapability and
long patient times.
Main body
Explanations for the issues that have occurred issues
1) Increasing the number of patients and decreases in capacity: From the CDC data, it
is clear that demand for some basic services increases and most of the hospital raises its
hand. The number of ED patient increases from 3 to 5 percent in the year from 1998-
2003. The issue has mainly occurred because of limited recruitment of workforce and the
presence of the required number of healthcare providers (McCarty, Gallien and Levi,
2012).
2) The rising cost for care: Hospital cost is rising rapidly. In five years the hospital
expenses increased up to 29% from $1031 to $1289 in 1197- 2002.
3) Limited technologies: Expenditure is limited which results in the limitations in the IT
resources. Historical and forecasted data are not available in hospitals (Price, 2011).
4) Decreasing revenue: With all the hard efforts, the hospital has to work harder with few
resources. Key funding resources have decreased due to budget pressure.
Opportunities provided by task force and analysis of proposed solutions
Director and the DACCPM executive director made many efforts to enhance PATA’s working
conditions. In 2005, the OR director, Moss, and other hospital head assembled and set forward a
plan to set up a new PATA clinic, and it was decided to open this new clinic at Mass General
West(MG West) satellite hospital in Waltham, Massachusetts.
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After the overall research, it would find that MG West Sattelite hospital is the best location for
more and more number of PATA patients.
In 2008, Pre-Operative Program director at UCSF Dr. Winener-Kronish appoint as a new leader
to form a PATA Task Force. In his team, the associate chief nurse of Patient Care Services, the
PATA medical director, the PATA nursing director, and the OR Medical Director are included.
Some of the major steps taken by him
● Giving priority to the more serious case.
● Provide online education to the patient about what to do on the day of surgery, instead of
offline.
● Switch to electronic tools for storage of medical records (Hou, 2011).
In 2009, a new seventh member was added, an MBA intern from MIT SloanSchool of
Management to manage the present state estimate of PATA’s ways and performance.
Well, the idea of making a group is good as it brings many changes which make the system
faster than the previous one. Switching to technologies for analyzing data and medical records
reduces the time, workload and also increases the efficiency of the workers (Porter, 2010).
Solution :
a) Introduction of fast track ED: This product reduces the patients in the hospital and also
patients are satisfied. It is planted in some commonly located area. Its main priority is to
treat normally day to day patient. This reduces the total time on task, provided guaranteed
and efficient care pan for the patients. This results in the increase the bed capacity in the
hospitals for more serious patients (Denton, 2013).
b) Formation of Critical Decision Unit(CDU): CDU is been set up with 8-12 beds for
patients that require therapy and more care. The CDU has reduces EDs admissions to the
hospital by 30%. The average admission time for CDU is 14- 15 hours in comparison to
the hospital which take 2-3 days (McCarty, Gallien and Levi, 2012).
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