Patient Flow Analysis

We've had a great increase in patient volume over the past six months. This has caused a few problems, problems I love to have mind you, but problems none the less. The primary concern we have right now is the patient admissions wait time is exceeding our targeted goals. Our primary goal is superior patient care, and that care begins the moment the patient walks into our hospital. If a patient comes in and has to wait 30 minutes before they are admitted they develop an impression of us before the actual care takes place. This of course is a terrible thing for us as well as the patients.

I'm working on a way to track a patient throughtout the facility in order to identify bottlenecks and possible areas of improvements. I use the term track loosely. I don't intend to use any form of RFID or video monitors to watch a patient. Instead it will all be employee driven. For example each employee that interacts with a patient will be responsible for "logging" that interaction into the patient tracking system. I've just started this project and and evaluating coding it in ASP.NET/C#. I've seen some pretty nifty things that are possible so far.