A Quicker and Safer Trip, Door to Door
- Coordinating transport times with other departments, and ensuring labs and meds are ready
- Ordering new, wider and more accessible chairs to make it easier to move patients
- Creating a new and dedicated transporter position to faciliate trips
What can your team do to work effectively with other teams? What else could your team do to better understand patients' needs?
No one wants a long commute, especially in a wheelchair. But when the Washington D.C. Medical Center opened, a routine roundtrip from the nearby train station took an hour. And since many of the patients arrived by rail, the Adult Medicine UBT stepped in. After figuring the timing for each trip, they ordered new chairs, coordinated with departments, called ahead about labs and meds, and requested a new transporter position. The team cut travel times from 30 minutes to 10.
Taking a long wheelchair ride to the hospital is not the best experience for the patient. By coordinating with other departments and using better-fitting chairs, you can speed up the travel time.
New wheelchairs and coordinated scheduling made transporting patients from the train station to the facility a 10-minute ride.
number of minutes shaved from one way wheelchair transport