Care Provider Routing System for Hospital at Home
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current software solutions for Hospital at Home programs are limited in functionality, hindering the efficient management of patient care and increasing the risk of hospital infections, as they fail to optimize care team routing and patient prioritization effectively.
Innovation Solution
A system that includes a location data module and a route module to determine visitation routes for care team members based on patient and care team location information, prioritizing patients based on symptom severity and geographic location, and dynamically updating routes in real-time to minimize travel time and distance.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If conventional software solutions are used for Hospital at Home programs, then basic patient care management is provided, but care team routing efficiency is poor and travel time is excessive
Solution Approach 1:
The system pre-calculates and stores optimal visitation routes for care team members before they begin their work shifts. By determining the most efficient routing assignments in advance based on patient locations, care team member locations, and priority scores, the system eliminates the need for time-consuming manual route planning during patient visits, thereby reducing overall travel time and improving routing efficiency.
2Reliability
If hospitals send more patients home to reduce hospital capacity and infection risk, then hospital capacity increases and infection transmission decreases, but care management complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The routing system automatically performs complex calculations and optimizations without requiring manual intervention. It self-determines patient priority scores by analyzing symptom severity and location data, self-generates optimized visitation routes for multiple care team members, and self-adjusts routing assignments in real-time based on changing conditions. This automation handles the increased management complexity that arises from caring for more dispersed home patients, allowing hospitals to expand home care capacity without proportionally increasing operational complexity.
3Loss of time
If care team members manually plan visitation routes, then flexibility is maintained, but time efficiency and route optimization are poor
Solution Approach 1:
The system replaces the manual mechanical process of route planning with an automated computational system. Instead of care team members manually calculating optimal routes considering multiple patients, locations, and priorities, the system uses algorithms to automatically determine and assign optimized visitation routes. This substitution dramatically reduces the time required to plan routes while maintaining or improving operational flexibility through automated real-time adjustments.
Data Source
AI summary
A system can include a location data module configured to receive location data, the location data including patient location information associated with a plurality patients and care team member location information associated with one or more care team members, and a route module operatively connected to the location data module and configured to determine a visitation route for each of the one or more care team members to visit the plurality of patients based on the location data.