Humber River Hospital Opens Analytics-Driven Command Center

Humber River Hospital (HRH), based in Toronto, this week opened Canada’s first hospital Command Centre to address capacity, safety, quality and wait time issues that have preoccupied hospitals across Canada.

As profiled in a Healthcare Informatics article, Humber River’s analytics-driven Command Center, built in collaboration with GE Healthcare Partners (GEHC), will enable improved visibility into the day-to-day activities in the hospital.

The heart of the command center will be the “Wall of Analytics” that processes real-time data from multiple source systems across the hospital. Using 16 advanced and predictive analytics developed by GE Healthcare Partners, 15 to 20 staff co-located in the command center will have real-time visibility and insight to take action on everything from delayed patient care activity to unbalanced physician and staff workload to unusual situations that may correlate to increased risk of patient harm, according to Humber River CIO Peter Bak.

This information will enable real-time decision support so staff can prioritize patient care activities, expedite discharges and make short-term staffing decisions, which will mitigate potential bottlenecks before they occur, Bak said.

“What the command center will do is concentrate decision makers in a single space, equip them with real-time information and empower them to take action to improve performance. We’re going to be monitoring a lot of patient care activity that’s going on across the hospital and putting that information in a meaningful way in front of people that are already tasked with organizing activity in the facility, like our bed management team and our environmental services manager,” Bak said in the November 8 Healthcare Informatics article.

“As North America’s first fully digital hospital with a commitment to high reliability care, our cutting-edge technology, insight-rich data and human expertise comes together through the Command Centre to create an excellent patient experience that is both timely and safe,” Barbara Collins, president and CEO of HRH, said in a prepared statement.

HRH began its digital transformation back in 2005 when planning started for the new site of the Humber River hospital, which opened October 2015. Since going fully digital, HRH has experienced a 20 percent increase in benefit and efficiency. Now, with the addition of HRH’s Command Centre, the hospital expects to double benefit and efficiency to 40 percent, hospital officials said.

“Whether it be the flu season that brings with it an influx of patients to the emergency department every year, or the fact that Canada has an aging and growing population, there are always pressures, both expected and unexpected, in acute care hospitals,” Collins said. “The digital transformation and command centre are focal points of our strategy to deal with these pressures.”

The Command Centre plan is a multi-generational roll-out and future phases will further enhance high reliability care and will allow the hospital to partner with the community so that more patients will be able to be cared for at home.