Chronic Diseases
Patients suffering from chronic diseases such as ischemic heart diseases, heart failure, diabetes, bronchial asthma or COPD, hypertension and cancers may require hospital admission for acute exaggeration of the diseases or for routine follow-up. These patients may fill the beds for quite some days and may block the available beds for acute patients. The admission of chronic patients for routine check-ups and routine surgeries and their requirements for hospitals beds are predictable. But due to lack of real time data the hospitals are unable to prepare for themselves. Online booking of hospitals for those predictable admissions may solve the problem.
Geriatric Patients
Elderly people who are physically fit may require some further physical follow-up and care packages in care homes and hospitals. They are being dubbed as bed blockers. The senior citizens and city councils are required to invest a considerable time over phone to find any available beds for them.
Solution?
An online booking system can be developed for reducing bed blocking and book real-time available hospital a care home beds. The system will be aimed at ensuring optimum utilization of available beds and facilitating the predictability of hospital bed occupation.
Experience
Hertfordshire City Council in UK developed and tested an online booking system named Bed Finder for availing beds for elderly patients. It is the first system of its kind to streamline referral processes and make searching for and booking beds more efficient. Christine Hartley from Hertfordshire City Council said:
"Phoning round the homes and getting an answer, I'd perhaps only get two answers [out of 10 or more] and yet I'd spend all that time on the phone."
OLM group developed the system. It is believed to cut the booking time by 50%. The system or some other systems like this may be used worldwide.
Help from BBC Hertfordshire