Streamlining Patient Transfers Through Digital Care Logistics
A large healthcare network improved patient flow and reduced operational cost by automating continuity-of-care workflows and treating bed capacity as a managed, real-time asset.
Context
Across a large hospital network, hundreds of patients each day require transfer from acute care into rehabilitation facilities. At this scale, continuity of care depends on precise coordination, yet the organisation’s transfer process relied almost entirely on manual effort.
Bed availability, cleaning schedules, transport logistics and facility readiness were managed across disconnected systems and informal processes. This created delays, increased cost and unnecessary stress for patients and staff alike. Leadership lacked visibility into capacity and performance, making optimisation difficult.
Approach
This engagement focused on replacing manual gridlock with a clear, automated model for managing patient transfers as a core operational service.
Define
The first step was understanding the true end-to-end journey.
The full patient transfer lifecycle was mapped, from hospital discharge through to rehabilitation admission, including clinical, logistical and asset-related steps. This clarified where delays were occurring, where costs were being introduced and how fragmented information was undermining continuity of care.
Beds were reframed as dynamic operational assets, not static inventory.
Align
With the journey defined, workflows and systems were aligned around a single source of truth.
A comprehensive asset management model was designed to track bed availability across the entire network in real time. A purpose-built application was then designed and implemented to orchestrate the transfer process end to end.
This included:
Requesting and approving bed allocation
Automatically scheduling patient transport
Coordinating bed cleaning, preparation and maintenance
Managing facility attributes required for incoming patients
All activities were integrated into a single, coherent workflow, removing manual coordination and guesswork.
Govern
Governance was embedded through visibility and metrics.
Real-time dashboards and reporting provided management with clear insight into bed utilisation, logistics performance and maintenance backlog. This allowed operational decisions to be made proactively rather than reactively, ensuring capacity was managed deliberately as demand fluctuated.
Outcome
Patient flow improved and operational efficiency increased.
Transfer times were reduced, improving the patient experience and strengthening continuity-of-care compliance. Manual workarounds were eliminated, allowing costs to be tracked accurately and processes to scale securely.
Management gained actionable insight into capacity and performance across the network, enabling ongoing optimisation. By introducing clarity, automation and accountability into a mission-critical workflow, the organisation transformed a complex logistical challenge into a controlled, data-driven operation.