City General Hospital:Workflow Efficiency, Unit Layout, or Staffing

New Hospital Unit Plan
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New Hospital Unit Plan
City General Hospital is an acute care facility that serves different patients during times of injury or illness. To execute its mandate effectively, the hospital should be well-designed, efficient, and safe. It is essential to plan for workflow efficiency to ensure that the new hospital unit runs as effectively and efficiently as possible. First, I would identify and remove constraints to promote effective unit operations. A constraint is anything that restricts the number of patients passing through the hospital unit. Constraints emanate from increased demand for the unit compared to the existing supply. To lower waiting times and delays in the newly opened hospital unit, changes made to enhance its operations should address the demand for the unit services and its existing capacity. To effectively manage bottlenecks, I will first identify any constraints and then eliminate unnecessary tasks away from the bottleneck. Secondly, removing intermediaries is a feasible strategy to enhance workflow efficiency. The involvement of many people in managing the flow of information and patients increases the risk of making medical errors and adds time to the process in its entirety. The other step is to use automation and technology such as electronic health records (EHRs), phones, and computers to enhance workflow and save time within the newly opened hospital unit (Institute for Healthcare Improvement, 2021). For example, entering important sign data into the EHR system directly instead of writing the outcomes on paper and later incorporating it into the chart is a practical approach to enhance workflow.
Planning the hospital unit’s layout is a challenging endeavor. Creating a comfortable and safe environment for patients to recuperate and healthcare professionals to practice prompts is a significant threshold of strategic planning. As a healthcare professional, I would rely on the vast experience of Design-Build partners to inform the unit layout. The new hospital unit layout should balance the space allocations and functions over time. Planning the layout entails understanding the master plan that gu...