Patient Throughput Coordinator - Bed Assignment Full-time Days

Company Description

At Northwestern Medicine, every patient interaction makes a difference in cultivating a positive workplace. This patient-first approach is what sets us apart as a leader in the healthcare industry. As an integral part of our team, you'll have the opportunity to join our quest for better healthcare, no matter where you work within the Northwestern Medicine system. At Northwestern Medicine, we pride ourselves on providing competitive benefits: from tuition reimbursement and loan forgiveness to 401(k) matching and lifecycle benefits, we take care of our employees. Ready to join our quest for better?

Job Description

The Patient Throughput Coordinator reflects the mission, vision, and values of NM, adheres to the organization’s Code of Ethics and Corporate Compliance Program, and complies with all relevant policies, procedures, guidelines and all other regulatory and accreditation standards.

The Patient Throughput Coordinator serves as the hospital lead for managing daily patient throughput. The primary goals of this position are to improve hospital throughput, increase inpatient bed utilization and reduce patient or bed turnaround delays.

Responsibilities:

• Serves as the primary hospital throughput manager for inpatient beds.
• Uses bedboard technology, rounding and communications with staff to maintain an understanding of house-wide bed supply and demand.
• Works with admission portals (e.g., Emergency Department, External Transfer, and Direct Admissions) and inpatient floors to plan for daily scheduled and unscheduled bed demand.
• Maintains communication with admission portals regarding bed availability and house status.
• Partners with Case Management and the Emergency Department to ensure appropriateness of the level of care assignments for all unscheduled admissions.
• Triages observation admissions to ensure appropriate use of inpatient and flexible care areas.
• Partners with care givers to pull patients from the admission portals to the inpatient floors and reduce wait times for inpatient beds.
• Works with the physician leadership to prioritize admissions and place patients directly to the most appropriate and available inpatient bed.
• Makes timely decisions regarding patient placement and escalates to the physician leadership as needed.
• Maintains continuous communication with the Bed Assignment team.
• Works with Clinical Coordinators and Care Facilitators to ensure the bedboard is consistently updated.
• Works with Clinical Coordinators and Care Facilitators to facilitate discharges as needed.
• Rounds to the inpatient floors to assess and resolve throughput issues.
• Serves as the External Transfer Nurse to triages inter-hospital transfers (19:00 - 07:00).
• Leads decompression plan during capacity/bed alert/diversion instances.
• Partners with Central Staffing Office to coordinate staffing and resource needs.
• Leverages clinical decision-making in working with Bed Assignment, physician leadership and admitting physicians to provide a seamless admission process.
• Accountable for key patient placement metrics (Ready to Move to Occupied times, etc.).
• Exhibits Patients First behavior to patients, visitors, physicians, and employees.
• Responsible for identifying throughput improvement opportunities.
• Tracks routine measures that are identified as Quality Indicators.

AA/EOE.

Qualifications

Required:

• State of Illinois Licensed Registered Professional Nurse.
• Bachelor's Degree in nursing.
• 5-7 years of nursing experience.
• Strong interpersonal skills, oral and written communication and analytical problem solving skills.
• Strong understanding of hospital systems processes and flow.
• Proven experience in conflict management and strong ability to negotiate differences.
• Basic word processing, e-mail, and computer knowledge skills.

Additional Information

Northwestern Medicine is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate in hiring or employment on the basis of age, sex, race, color, religion, national origin, gender identity, veteran status, disability, sexual orientation or any other protected status.

Benefits

We offer a wide range of benefits that provide employees with tools and resources to improve their physical, emotional, and financial well-being while providing protection for unexpected life events. Please visit our Benefits section to learn more.