Each year, the US health care system loses about $1 trillion to waste. One major factor is inefficient operations, such as poor operating room utilization or discharge planning that starts too late.
To address this problem, Neenah, Wisconsin-based health system ThedaCare announced last week that it was invested $3 million in Qventusa company that sells artificial intelligence software to healthcare systems to automate care operations.
More and more health systems have made investments in health technology companies, but it is relatively rare for them to publicly disclose the amount.
ThedaCare joined other investors in Qventus’ $50 million investment round, which the company announced in February. Some of these investors include Prime Minister, Norwest Partners and THL.
Mark Thompson, the health system’s chief financial officer and chief operating officer, said ThedaCare chose to invest in Qventus because “the two organizations are aligned in envisioning the future of healthcare” and agree that implementing automation in care operations can solve some of the biggest operational and financial pressures facing hospitals.
Qventus, which was founded in 2012 and is based in Mountain View, California, offers technology that optimizes efficiency in hospital settings, perioperative care settings and command centers.
The company’s inpatient technology automates early discharge planning to enable greater bed capacity, and its perioperative solution automates OR planning processes to improve OR access for increased surgery revenue. Command center technology optimizes patient flow and resource utilization by healthcare systems, enabling them to better manage demand, care progression and post-acute placement.
By deploying the Qventus technology, Thompson said ThedaCare expects to give its patients more timely discharges, greater transparency about the progress of their care, shorter turnaround times for surgeries. He pointed out that implementing the technology will also benefit employees because they will have less manual work, such as making phone calls back and forth to schedule discharges.
Through its investment, ThedaCare will collaborate with Qventus to develop new products, as well as support the company in expanding its technology to additional hospitals across the country, according to Thompson.
He said the health system made the decision to continue this partnership with Qventus after overcoming the brutal operational challenges posed by the pandemic. According to Thompson, ThedaCare, like many other providers, is at a place where they must have a laser focus on optimizing clinical and operational resources if they are to succeed.
To measure the success of its partnership with Qventus, the health system will closely track the reduction in inpatient length of stay for patients who are medically ready for discharge so they can safely transition to their next phase of care, such as home or a nursing facility. qualified nurses.
ThedaCare will also track reductions in wait times for scheduled surgeries, as well as conduct qualitative patient and staff satisfaction surveys.
Thompson believes Qventus’ suite of automation technologies is the best option for optimizing operations at ThedaCare because its platform works in a variety of settings. As the company continues to raise money and partner with vendors to refine its technology, it may be trying to outpace its competitors — many of which are EHR vendors that offer additional automation solutions such as Epic, Cherner and Meditech.
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