PAC Bed Availability Tool Saves Jefferson Time and Money

Challenge:

At the height of the pandemic, Jefferson Health and many other hospitals found it difficult to get their COVID-19 patients to the right post-acute setting.

Bed space was scarce and it could take case managers hours to call individual facilities to determine availability.

As COVID-19 continued to spread, Jefferson needed up-to-date information on the number of COVID-positive and COVID-negative beds available at each Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF) and inpatient rehab facility in their network. Real-time access to this data would help case managers, social workers and discharge planners ensure timely patient throughput and appropriate placements.

By automatically accessing bed availability and start-of-care data, case managers can spend more time on patient care—and get an immediate, positive ROI. -Travis Woyner, Vice President of Product, Dina

Solution:

Working with Jefferson Health’s three New Jersey hospitals, Dina launched its PAC Bed Availability product to automate the bed availability identification process with the hospital’s SNF and post-acute network partners.

Using text-message-based technology, PAC Bed Availability automatically surveys network partners prior to the start of the daily discharge planning process. This helped Jefferson:

1. Identify post-acute providers that were accepting COVID-19 patients.
2. Identify which post-acute providers were allowing visitors.
3. Get up-to-date daily dashboards to track bed availability information.

Today, Jefferson maintains an efficient patient throughput process and saves hours of time previously spent calling individual facilities to determine bed space.

Dina and Jefferson: Innovating on Behalf of Patients

”Having access to real-time bed availability is crucial to maintaining proper throughput, said Dina’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Maryann Lauletta. “Not only does it allow for decreased length of stay, but it enables discharges to happen earlier in the day, which is safer and more satisfying for the patient. In addition, it opens up bed capacity at times when most Emergency Departments are becoming busy, during the late afternoon and early evening, thus allowing sick patients in need of a floor bed to have one available in a timely fashion.”

“It takes four hours for someone on our team to get on the phone and determine who has beds. Dina has made this process a whole lot easier.” -Melissa Mordecai, Jefferson’s director of post-acute care integration

*Based on 5,366 hospital stays from January 2020-March 2021 at Jefferson Health’s three New Jersey hospitals: Cherry Hill, Stratford and Washington Township

Improving Patient Throughput: How Post-Acute Care Bed Availability Works

1. Quickly enroll post-acute partners at no cost.
2. Use text message-based tools to automatically survey post-acute partners.
3. Access daily dashboards to track bed availability.
4. Share dashboard data with discharge teams.
5. Focus outreach with providers that have capacity.