While healthcare organizations have been scrambling to use AI to help manage the crush of the pandemic, most have not lost sight of the cost-savings potential of the new technologies, particularly as pandemic continues to bite into other revenue streams.
A recent article at HealthLeadersMedia, for example, describes the success Tampa General Hospital (TGH) has had in the two years since the launch of its CareComm command center, which is fueled by 20 separate AI applications.
According to John Couris, president and CEO of Tampa General Hospital (TGH), “the system has made the hospital more efficient, eliminating 20,000 excess patient days and reducing average length of stay by half a day . . . In addition, the hospital credits its CareComm capabilities for enabling it to operate at maximum occupancy and reduce emergency room diversion by 25% for the level one trauma center that serves the Florida's West Coast.”
Said Couris, "We feel sometimes that to fix a problem, we've got to build a building or build more capacity. We started to think a little differently saying, 'How do we drive value to the consumer by doing better with what we have and not just simply building more.' “
While the technology began operating in 2018, the article notes, “last year TGH officially launched CareComm with the opening of an 8,000-square-foot facility, styled after NASA's Mission Control Center, replete with 38 wall-mounted LCD screens . . .”
The system optimizes minute-to-minute patient care operations with real-time actionable information, and the 1006-bed non-profit academic medical center says it has experienced $40 million in savings by reducing system-wide inefficiencies.
“We built CareComm with a focus on improving both efficiency and effectiveness at TGH, and we have made tremendous strides since launching it last year," Couris said in a statement to HealthLeaders. "CareComm is not only the center of gravity for our artificial intelligence platform," he commented in the news release, "it's the center of gravity for the entire hospital system.”
He added that short-term plans for the future include expanding the focus of the system "to help drive an increase in quality and the value we provide to our patients and the health care consumer,” while longer term TGH plans to expand AI services to include ambulatory care, acute care, and physician practices.
And then, of course, there’s still the need to grapple with COVID-19.
“The COVID-19 crisis requires a regional response,” Couris said. “We’ll keep working together with the Florida healthcare systems and have agreed to share information, messaging to the public, coordinate activities, share resources, and innovate and support our communities together.”