The occupancy rate is an important indicator in health management. Its main objective is to indicate to the institution’s professionals what capacity a hospital has for care.
For example: if the rate is high, it can be a worrying moment, and it is necessary to analyze the reason for this high rate.
The occupancy rate helps managers and audit professionals and is important in implementing the institution’s internal strategies. In today’s content, we will see how technology helps reduce the institution’s occupancy rate. Read on!
What Is The Occupancy Rate?
Also called the hospitalization rate, the occupancy rate is a simple mathematical calculation to determine the number of hospital beds available for patients in an institution.
As mentioned at the beginning, the metric serves as an indicator for hospital management, especially regarding the availability of beds.
In addition, it is important to consider that full beds mean something needs to be better managed. Patients who stay in the hospital for a long time run the risk of developing nosocomial infections and being affected by pressure injuries.
Also, the longer a patient stays in the hospital, the more resources are needed for their care, which can lead to hospital disallowances when closing the patient’s account and sending it to the healthcare provider.
Bed management was put “to the test” during the COVID-19 pandemic, when beds were full, and there was no way to accommodate more hospital patients. Even those insured by a health insurance company had problems with care.
What can be taken as the “moral of the story” is that a plan B is needed so there are no bottlenecks in the beds, and thus be able to attend and behave with all those needing care.
In this scenario, technology is necessary. One of the great challenges of bed management is handling a large number of patients simultaneously, avoiding wasting resources and increasing work productivity.
How Does Technology Help To Reduce The High Rate?
In a few years, humanity can say that technology works “miracles” due to the number of advances and the place of importance achieved.
We Can Count On Technology To Assist In Hospital Management
It is important to point out that technology has been developing to detect important health management problems and give professionals the necessary tools to solve them.
Consider the following scenario: a hospital provides services to a health care provider. She then forwards the patient to that location, where he is hospitalized, and the deadline for his discharge is two weeks.
After that time, the first extension request arrives, as the patient is not ready for discharge. After some time, the patient is still unable to leave the place. This can start to become a problem.
When checking the patient, he had to stay there for several reasons, and one of them was an adverse event that made him develop a pressure ulcer.
The institution does not have a system that monitors the patient, and this work is done in spreadsheets and papers.
The more time the patient spends, the more costs are generated for the hospital, which the operator will pay.
Did you realize how much a “snowball” effect can occur in a hospital without the right tool? This is where technology comes in to help.
With software, it is possible to integrate information previously done in isolation in a place where those who need it have the necessary data in their hands at the necessary time.
Centralizing information is the strong point of technology in health, and with software, this is possible. Especially those who work with cloud storage, which makes it possible to store more information and also greater security against attacks.
Also Read: How Does Cloud Server Technology Work?
