Wheat Ridge, Colorado-based Lutheran Medical Center, which is part of Broomfield, Colorado-based SCL Health, wanted to improve its operations.
“We determined a few years ago that for a hospital like ours that has a very challenging payer mix, … running an extremely cost-efficient operation was necessary for stability,” said Lutheran Medical Center president and CEO Grant Wicklund in a phone interview. “One of the ways we identified we could become even more cost-efficient was to be absolutely world-class at having the appropriate length of stay.”
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Noomi Hirsch, the medical center’s vice president of operations, took the lead on the effort. In a phone interview, she explained that the organization was able to hit low-hanging fruit areas, but eventually started looking at options in the technology world to tackle the problem.
That’s when it came across Qventus. The Mountain View, California-based technology company uses artificial intelligence to help health systems improve their operations. Its goal is to enable a system’s employees to better manage processes and improve efficiency and quality, said Qventus co-founder and CEO Mudit Garg in a phone interview.
The company uses a software licensing model, though Garg declined to reveal specific cost information for Lutheran Medical Center.
Qventus has raised more than $43 million in funding, including a $30 million Series B round in May 2018. It currently works with more than 70 hospitals and health systems, including Dignity Health, MedStar Health, NewYork-Presbyterian, Emory University Hospital and Sutter Health.
Lutheran Medical Center’s relationship with Qventus started last year, and the Colorado hospital officially went live on Qventus’ solution in October 2018. It is using the tool to coordinate discharges, which is a challenging process. This is because there are numerous people involved in a patient’s care and therefore in determining specific parts of the discharge process, Wicklund noted.
“We have chosen to implement this in our inpatient setting,” said Hirsch, noting that Qventus’ technology was originally deployed in the internal medicine unit. Lutheran Medical Center has since added it to its ortho, surgical, telemetry, progressive care and intensive care units as well.
Though it is still in the early days of using Qventus’ technology, Lutheran Medical Center is seeing overall reductions in length of stay. Wicklund added that the solution satisfies patients, too. They’re able to get out of the hospital faster rather than waiting for what can be a lengthy period of time to get discharged.
Picture: mrspopman, Getty Images
