PRNewswire/ … Tampa General becomes the fourth hospital in the world and first in Florida to open a command center in partnership with GE Healthcare
Tampa General Hospital launched a high-tech “mission control” clinical command center which uses artificial intelligence and predictive analytics to improve and better coordinate patient care at a lower cost.
The hospital’s new center is called CareComm and has been developed in partnership with GE Healthcare. It features 20 artificial intelligence apps, video walls with 38 large screens, 32 work stations, multiple computer systems, and a multi-disciplinary clinical team that includes doctors, nurses, and allied health professionals.
CareComm staff use these resources to predict the needs of patients and team members before they arise. With CareComm, Tampa General can anticipate potential roadblocks and issues in the care process, ensuring that rooms, equipment and medical professionals will be available for patients as soon as they’re needed.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis came to TGH for the CareComm unveiling on Tuesday and said he was impressed by the innovation.
“If you had told me we were in Kennedy Space Center in there, I probably would have believed you,” the governor said. He said TGH staff had explained how CareComm helps different hospital departments collaborate and avoid communications silos. “They’ve broken down all these barriers and are able to achieve efficiencies and I think that’s great.”
“CareComm is a new center at Tampa General Hospital that harnesses technology and ingenuity to further improve healthcare,” DeSantis said. “Ensuring Floridians have access to higher quality and more affordable healthcare has been a priority of my administration. I look forward to seeing CareComm’s impact in the Tampa Bay Community.”
The center will improve quality while decreasing costs, said John Couris, president and CEO of Tampa General Hospital.
“CareComm is a huge step in our journey to become the safest and most innovative academic health system in the country,” Couris said. “We’re grateful to our physicians, nurses, staff, and our GE Healthcare partners for helping us leverage technology to drive quality up and costs down. This means better care and lower costs for patients.”
Several other elected officials attended the unveiling on Tuesday.
CareComm’s temporary facility, open since December, already has helped TGH reduce the average patient’s length of stay in the hospital by about half a day. This creates a better experience for patients who are ready to leave the hospital and also allows new patients to get to their rooms sooner. Reducing such inefficiencies has saved about $10 million – savings that ultimately benefit staff and patients.
All this data and analysis is focused on one goal – providing world-class care to patients in a more efficient way.
“CareComm helps us ensure that each patient gets the best possible care right when they need it,” said Dr. Pete Chang, vice president of Care Transitions. “Because our CareComm team is focusing on smoothing each patient’s journey through the hospital, our clinical team at the bedside has more time to spend with the patient.”
TGH doctors, nurses and administrators already work to manage the flow of patients, but it’s a complex task at a 1,007 bed academic medical center that on any given day treats people for cancer, traumatic accidents, heart attacks, infectious diseases and transplant operations.
