Throughput Diagnostic
Three weeks, $14,500, fixed. We find the one step that holds up patient flow, measure it from the timestamps your EHR already records, put a dollar figure on each day of delay and write a plan your team can run.
Prefer to skip the call? Get a written proposal
Built for
- Hospitals where admitted patients wait in the ED for a bed
- Units where discharge orders are written early and patients leave late
- Surgery programs where some days overflow and others run light
- Hospitals in CMS's TEAM model that need a cost baseline for each surgical episode
Why it's worth it
Today
Admitted patients wait in the ED for beds held by patients who are ready to leave. Each extra day one of those patients stays is called a delay day. New York hospitals' own estimates put each one at about $2,800 (our arithmetic on a 2022 survey by HANYS, the Healthcare Association of New York State), so ten delay days a week come to roughly $1.5 million a year. The diagnostic replaces that estimate with your hospital's own cost.
After
In three weeks you know which step holds patients up, what it costs each month and the first change to make. Every number comes from your own timestamps.
What you get
Week 1
Where patients wait
The one step that limits patient flow, where the patients waiting there come from and how long they wait, on one page your COO and CFO can both use.
Week 2
Measured baseline
How many patients arrive each hour, how long each step takes and how full each unit runs, from 90 days of the timestamps your EHR already records.
Week 2
Cost of delay
Dollars per day of delay from your own cost per bed day, with the arithmetic shown. The report shows the cash a delay day costs and, separately, the admissions you couldn't take because those beds were still occupied. The two are kept apart because much of a hospital's cost is fixed in the short term, so freeing a bed saves less cash than the average cost per day suggests.
Week 3
The plan
The change to make at that step, the gain to expect, and where the wait would move next. It comes as a report and slides in your template, ready for your operations committee.
Hospitals in CMS's TEAM model
For five surgeries, TEAM sets a Medicare spending target for each case, called a target price, that covers the hospital stay or outpatient procedure and the 30 days after the patient leaves the hospital. The diagnostic produces the cost and flow baseline for each of the five, from the TEAM claims your hospital requests from CMS.
Price
One fixed price, written into your proposal. Nothing is billed by the hour.
Throughput Diagnostic
For hospital operations and finance leaders
Price: $14,500
One time
3 weeks
The step that holds up patient flow, measured from your own timestamps, priced per day of delay and paired with a plan.
What's included in Throughput Diagnostic
- A one-page statement of where patients wait and why
- A baseline from 90 days of your own timestamps
- The cost of each day of delay, with the arithmetic shown
- A plan for the first change, as a report and slides in your template
- For TEAM hospitals, the episode baseline for each of the five surgeries
- The code behind every number
Payment and terms
- Half at signing and half at delivery
- Paying by purchase order? There's no deposit: we invoice half at kickoff and half at acceptance
- Timestamps and categories only, with no names, medical record numbers or typed notes
- If we find in the first three days that the work won't pay off for you, we return your deposit
- You keep the code behind every number
Start and finish dates are set in writing in your proposal.
Tyler Kent does this work himself. He has 13+ years in data science and analytics, most of it in healthcare. About Tyler
Questions
What data do you need?
One extract of event timestamps from your EHR's admission, discharge, transfer and OR records, with unit, disposition and case type. Every EHR keeps these, including Epic, Oracle Health and MEDITECH. No names, medical record numbers, dates of birth or typed notes.
How is the data protected?
The work runs on a limited data set under a Data Use Agreement, or under a BAA, inside your own systems if you prefer. It starts once that agreement and our insurance are in place. Data is deleted at the end.
How do you calculate the cost of delay?
Excess bed days times your own cost per bed day. Much of that cost is fixed in the short term: in a 1999 JAMA study of one large public teaching hospital, 84% of its 1993 budget was fixed. So the report shows the cash a delay day costs separately from the admissions you couldn't take because those beds were still occupied. If you don't have an internal figure, we start from about $2,800 per delay day, our arithmetic on a 2022 survey of New York hospitals by HANYS, the state's hospital association.
What if the hold-up is outside the hospital?
Then the plan says so, puts a number on it and focuses on the part your team controls, such as how early staff start looking for a nursing home, rehab facility or other place that will take the patient. In a 2022 study of New York hospitals, finding a place that would take the patient was a cause in more delay days than anything else.
How is this different from the Capacity and Staffing Forecast?
The diagnostic finds the step that holds patients up and what to change there. The Capacity and Staffing Forecast predicts how many patients each unit will have, so staffing can match. If you're not sure which you need, the first call sorts it out.
How an engagement worksQuestions about prices, payment and patient data
Book a 20-minute call
Tell us where patients wait. If we can help, you'll get a fixed-price proposal within 48 hours.
Prefer to skip the call? Get a written proposal
Or email tyler@kentapplied.com, or connect on LinkedIn.