As COVID-19 cases worsened across the state of Arkansas, hospitals struggled to keep up with the need. It became difficult to find bed placement for patients needing to be transferred to other facilities. The State of Arkansas decided to find a way to help hospitals make transferring and accepting patients easier.
Over the last few weeks, Arkansas hospitals have replaced their former transfer process with a new system. Pulsara is a communication and logistics platform that connects hospitals across the state. The company's Virtual Placement Center shows hospitals when a patient needs a transfer and offers other hospitals the opportunity to initiate a conversation and accept them.
Interviewing a number of clinical leaders across Arkansas, reporter Ashley Godwin with Little Rock's CBS affiliate THV11 covered the story. "It's a virtual waiting room, essentially for patients requiring or requesting transfer throughout the state of Arkansas," said Dr. Rawle Seupaul, Chief Clinical Officer of UAMS.
Hospital staff can see the patients enter the portal in real-time and send messages to start the process of transferring a patient.
"You can make the comment, 'We are full right now, but we'd be interested in taking this patient once we have capacity.' Or you can say, 'Hey, we'd love to take this patient. We have room. Let's go ahead and make the connection,'" said Dr. Seupaul.
The State of Arkansas and the Department of Health initiated the state Load Balancing Program to make the Pulsara platform available to hospitals across the state. It's been in operation for a few weeks now, replacing the former COVID Comm, a third-party dispatching service.
"The former way of doing that [involved] multiple calls in order to get a bed made available or to know where a patient might be able to land," said Cody Walker, Vice President of Operations at Baptist Health.
Hospitals are already seeing the benefit of Pulsara and are optimistic that it will continue to be useful after the pandemic. "I think this transfer portal is going to be a really good tool for us moving forward in the future, and I think it showed a great deal of foresight," said Dr. Gerry Jones, CHI St. Vincent Chief Medical Officer.
The State of Texas and the State of Arkansas are using Pulsara to solve load balancing issues due to COVID-19. Check out what Pulsara MED OPS can do for you.
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