PATA Case Study Analysis for Healthcare Operations Management

This article discusses the challenges faced by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in the Pre-Admission Testing Area (PATA) and proposed solutions for healthcare operations management. It covers issues such as long waiting times, high patient flow, and customer dissatisfaction. The article also explores the opportunities initially thought by the task force and an analysis of the proposed solutions. Finally, it suggests steps to find a solution, including data analysis and business re-engineering.

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HME712: HEALTHCARE OPERATIONS
Topic: PATA Case Study Analysis
PATA Case study:

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Introduction
Health care operations management is very vital for any facility to
function effectively and efficiently. It involves taking control of the costs
as well as balancing between the undertakings of healthcare delivery on
time against the quality of care offered. The case includes the in-depth
examination of the situation in Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), in
the Pre-Admission Testing Area (PATA) while giving out solutions to the
existing challenges.
The explanation for issues theoretically
Firstly, the PATA case study is all about the challenges that stand
next to the operating systems of the hospital. Best quality service
achievement to the patients involved the use of long waiting times so that
it gets achieved. Another big challenge that PATA was facing includes the
considerable workload on the surgeons. The patient's flow was very high
in the hospital day in day out, leading to the encounter of delays in
treatment services for the patients. The hospital staff had to work on
overtime basis which led to a new strategic challenge that the
management was not used to all these aiming to compensate the
increasing flow of the patients. The registered nurses and medical
doctors worked while upset because they had been salaried to work from
7 am to 5 pm, but they were now working until 7 or 8 pm.
The analysis of the issues outlined in the study finds that the system
delays led to the long waiting time for the clients. Pressure for all these
failures got piled to the surgeons who later had to show differences on the
referral of patients to PATA. The delays originated from the lab reports,
slow admission process, pre and peri-operative delays in the hospital. All
these were the primary causes of the patient flow challenges and
disparities.

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The hospital faced a triaging problem. Triaging involves the process
of identifying the priority needs of patients depending on the severity of
their health condition. It is a process that a hospital set up efficiently uses
to ration patient treatment while using resources that are much
pressurized which may not give every patient a chance to be treated
immediately. All patients in the hospital were queuing in the PATA
irrespective of their medical condition and appointment time.
Another challenge to the PATA was the way discharges and the
scheduling practices inappropriateness. All these challenges facing the
hospital originated from the pre-admission work of the PATA and the
existence of inefficient systems in the hospital. They led to operational
problems.
The customer dissatisfactions experienced in the hospital where
patients move out without any attendance has led to another big problem.
The PATA team also had indeed failed in attempts to gather funds to
acquire extra resources to overcome the challenges hence piling up the
issues.
Opportunities Initially Thought by the Task Force and an
Analysis of the Proposed Solutions
The given case study involved the task force team proposing many
strategies to get a solution to the issues facing PATA. There were trials to
on planning to construct an additional clinic that could see the operations
of PATA transferred to a new area. Secondly, improvements in the pre-
operative processes got proposed. There were many obstructions and
huddles to the proposed solutions. PATA itself faces by financials strains,
need for more resources as well as social barriers. All these barriers led to
the dropping of the above problem-solving strategies.
On the other hand, proposals were made considering past
experiences, and the task force decided to improve triaging, provision of

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education online rather than the initial inpatient education as well as
digitalizing medical health records.
The fact that the proposed corrective measures required extra
resources and finances made them lag behind to bringing change in the
hospital.
One of the excellent operative solutions to the high patient flow
challenge is the simulation and micro analysis of the situation at hand.
Scheduling the visits of the patients in a technical way would lead to a
reduction of the high patient flow. The idea of training the staff might
improve them psychologically on problem-solving strategies such as quick
decision making, reduce multitasking, and improve the queuing and
scheduling experiences. It will also enhance the procedure of discharging
and patient flow.
Triaging stands out as an excellent strategy to increase efficiency
because it will enable the PATA to strategize on how to maximize the use
of the present resources to fit their needs. The digitalization of medical
records is a milestone towards enhancing accuracy and easy retrieval of
data in the PATA.
What steps would you take to find a solution – if you say
analyze the data, what would you be looking for, how would you
know that you had seen it?
Data analysis could be used to find the standardized measure of the
extent of the problems on the efficiency of PATA. Qualitative data analysis
to get the problems in figures could be an adequate milestone to achieve
a solution to the challenges. The scheduling data indicates delayed
timings in the same services offered to the clients. There are varied
lengths of visits for the clients from the orthopedic patients as per figure
2a which happens to be similar in all departments.

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There exists a disturbance on the timings and check-ins indicating
that the lengths of the stay and or the appointment timings weren't
appropriate within a department. It was indicted in fig 2c that PATA made
inefficient scheduled figures. In fig4, missed appointments by the medical
doctors and registered nursed were evident.
Business re-engineering is a perfect match to remodeling needs of
the PATA. It involves fundamental rethinking to and redesigning of the
critical areas of the business process with the aim of achieving dramatic
improvements in the critical performance measures such as service, cost,
and speed of the operations. All the works in the hospital need to get
organized as per its results.
In conclusion, all the challenges are solvable using the qualitative
analysis of operational data and the re-engineering of the business
processes.