Patient-Flow Analysis for Planning a Focused Hospital Layout: Tampere Heart Hospital Case

Objective: The objective of this study is present how a patient movement-based patient-flow analysis is performed for planning the new Heart Hospital of Tampere University Hospital and how patient transfer distances can be shortened by this method. Background: The Heart Hospital had served patients as a service line organization for years. However, the Heart Hospital layout rather looked like functional layout instead of service line layout because the units of the Heart Hospital have been spread out around the large university hospital campus. Method: The flow routes of patients treated over the course of 1 year were analyzed by information technology systems in the hospital planning phase. Then, the proximity ranking of the main functions of the Heart Hospital was made. Layout planning was performed based on the proximity ranking. Nine months after the opening of the new Heart Hospital, the distances between the various hospital functions were calculated for the old Heart Hospital and the new one. Results: In the old Heart Hospital, patients’ transfer distance was 5,654 km (3,513 miles), while the corresponding figure for the new Heart Hospital was 3,797 km (2,359 miles), which means the distance was reduced by 33%. Conclusion: The patient-flow analysis works as it generated substantially shorter patient transfer distances in the new Heart Hospital. Shorter distances have supported more fluent patient flows that, in turn, has contributed higher productivity and quality of care.