Streamlined Admissions Process

The Children’s Hospital recently changed the admissions process to help create a more efficient patient placement environment. The Patient Placement department was created to help ensure all admission requests for inpatient services are handled in a consistent and efficient manner. The development of the Patient Placement Department created a single department within the hospital that has knowledge of bed status throughout the entire facility and at our Network of Care inpatient facilities. The Patient Placement Department works closely with physicians, nursing supervisors, case mangers and unit level nursing to effectively, and in a timely manner, place patients on the most appropriate unit, and, at the same time, have a better understanding of bed status across the organization.

Benefits of this New Process Include:

• Reduction in the number of phone calls needed to admit a patient to The Children’s Hospital
• Determination of the level of care and best placement for each admission request by the Referring/Admitting Physician and Admitting Case Manager
• Patient placements determined during a single group conversation with the Admitting Case Manager, Referring/ Admitting Physician and The Children’s Hospitalist/ED Attending/Specialist
• Real-time knowledge of house-wide bed status
• Real-time response to admission requests, including bed number

The new Patient Placement Department will serve as the only portal of entry for admissions to The Children’s Hospital. Inpatient Medical Director Jenny Reese, MD, explains: “The Patient Placement department provides a dedicated staff to field phone calls and coordinate communication in the most efficient manner possible. It serves to improve our patient flow by using the most up to date technology to monitor bed availability hospital-wide and in our Network of Care. The new department also provides improved service to our referring providers by using conference calls to connect the referring provider to the accepting attending physician at the time of the initial phone call. Finally, the patient placement department allows us to provide more accurate contact information the primary care physicians need when communicating with the physicians caring for their patients during the hospital stay.”

For all inpatient admission/consultation services please contact the new Patient Placement Department at The Children’s Hospital. We can be reached through One Call: (720) 777-3999 or (800) 525-4871.