Our Work

Alberta Health Services

Emergent Care Process Re-engineering
Alberta Health Services (AHS) is the single health authority for the Canadian province of Alberta providing health services through 850 facilities throughout the province, including hospitals, clinics, continuing care facilities, mental health facilities, and community health sites while providing a variety of programs and services. We were engaged through the AHS Seniors Health division to assist in solving the issue of massive bottlenecks in emergency rooms across the region due to the challenge of seniors with complex medical issues taking up emergent beds that were needed for ER patients. Rather than taking a strictly clinical care path perspective on resolving this challenge, we instead treated it like business process re-engineering engagement. Taking this approach allowed us the ability to map out the clinical pathways, identify the bottlenecks in the system, and identify targeted solutions to reduce those. The initiative was extremely successful, and we were able to significantly reduce the number of ER beds that were being tied up by senior patients that were needlessly stuck in the ER as there wasn't a place to take them.