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Capacity Management at the Core of Hospital Responsiveness

Kevin Lilly

· Hospitals
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Healthcare technology executive Kevin Lilly, most recently served as a senior vice president with biopharmaceutical company, MiMedx, in Marietta, Georgia and has built a career on applying strategy, analytics, and information to the healthcare field. With MiMedx, he rolled out highly successful sales strategies and plans to a global marketplace, while recruiting and supporting top talent in the organization. Kevin Lilly’s professional interests include capacity management in hospitals, an important ancillary topic to his field of healthcare information management.

Capacity management refers to the ability of a hospital to appropriately address the full range of needs patients present at any given time using existing resources. It is a vital part of a strategic plan focused on successful patient outcomes.

Hospitals that implement capacity management practices are expected to anticipate need and demand, allocate resources, schedule deployments of staff and materials, and facilitate the smooth flow of patients from their entry into the hospital situation through to discharge and back to continued good health. And a well-run institution with a robust and nimble capacity management program tends to be one that offers a higher quality of staff relationships, patient care, and overall patient experience.

Best practices in capacity management achieve this through a strategy based on a clear visualization of the flow of care, services, and processes at every level of the organization. Capacity management should always be front-and-center of any hospital’s planning process. During a disaster, it becomes mission-critical.