Patient flow

Patient Flow is the number of patients per ICU bed per period of time.

Indicators
Indicator:	Patient Flow
Created/Raw:	Created
Program:	Critical Care
Start Date:	Jan 1 2013
End Date:
Reports:	Critical Care Program Quality Indicator Report

• Cargo

• SMW:

• Categories

• Default form:

QI domain

• Efficient

Reported as

Count of patient discharged per bed per period of time

Significance

Patient flow indicates the throughput for a unit and is complementary to occupancy, which is a stagnant measure. Flow has been shown to correlate with outcomes and is considered a surrogate for experience. Factors affecting patient flow include ICU patient type and acuity, Structural and process-related aspects of care, and factors affecting patient flow following ICU care.

Sampling Plan / Procedure

Inclusion Criteria

All ICU patients

Exclusion Criteria

None

Frequency

• Total number of ICU discharges are calculated and reported on a monthly, quarterly or yearly basis based on the daily data.
• Time Reference for month, quarter or year is based on ICU discharge dates.
• Number of physical ICU beds available. The number of available bed rarely change over time except for pandemic or seasonal closures.
  • If the number of daily available bed changes over the period of time, use the number of bed which is the most numbered. Example, in a monthly period, 20 out of 30 days have opened bed = 15 while 10 days have 14 beds, use the number of bed=15.

Definition and Derivation

Numerator

Num = Total number of discharges

Denominator

Denom = Number of ICU beds

Formula

Patient Flow = Num / Denom

Example

• Time Reference: Discharge Dates from Jan 1, 2017 to March 31, 2017
• Number of patients who have discharge dates from Jan 1, 2017 to March 31, 2017 at HSC MICU = 195
• Opened Bed = 15
• Patient Flow = 195 / 15 = 13

Data Sources

• The number of patients discharged is taken from the Centralized data.mdb.
• The daily bed available or opened per unit is taken from the Bed Census Database.

SAS Program

Part of S:\MED\CCMED\​S:\MED\CCMED\Julie\SAS_CFE\CC_reports\ChartReport\prepCCChart.sas

Report Users

• Critical Care Directors and Site Managers
• Critical Care Quality Improvement Team (QIT)

Related articles

Related articles:

Quality Assurance (← links) Accept DtTm field (← links) User:JMojica (← links)