GE to aid Mt. Sinai with patient care, throughput

GE Healthcare has signed a multi-year agreement with Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City to improve patient care through a solution that combines change management consulting and technology.

In the early phase of the agreement, GE employees in Lean Six Sigma process management will work with Mt. Sinai staff and GE's AgileTrac automated workflow and visualization system to track patient care pathways. The phase will enable hospital staff and administration to observe their clinical pathways and allow the hospital to visualize problems and develop real-time solutions.

Mt. Sinai and GE will gather real-time data on clinical workflow patterns throughout the 1,171-bed, 2.7 million square foot tertiary-care hospital to highlight process bottlenecks and showcase areas of improvement. The goal is to streamline patient flow, improve operational efficiency, and decrease patients' length of stay by decreasing wait times and freeing up capacity.

As the project develops, GE said it will collaborate with Mt. Sinai to simulate hospital-wide clinical workflow using GE's simulation tools and Mt. Sinai's own real-time data. The simulation model will identify operational issues hours or even days before they occur.

The AgileTrac system uses real-time location technology (RTLS) to track the locations of people and devices for patient flow through the hospital. The system integrates events and data from other clinical IT systems in the hospital in addition to its collection of real time data that is automatically fed into the system to manage patient workflow. The patient workflow is managed through an engine that integrates the data with algorithms to provide next steps, status updates and notifications as patients and resources move through the facility. Operational status updates are visible on various dashboard views throughout the hospital.

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