Impact Evaluation of a Digital Coordination Centre in a tertiary hospital

Opportunity

Digital coordination centres locate a multidisciplinary team in a centralised hub with access to real-time data, dashboards, and analytics to better manage beds and patient flows. A tertiary hospital that adopted this approach needed to rigorously understand both the implementation experience and the measurable impacts of the intervention.

Intervention

The Centre's research team conducted a mixed-methods evaluation of the digital coordination centre. A qualitative implementation evaluation using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) identified key enablers and barriers to the coordination centre's success. This was complemented by quantitative analysis estimating the intervention's impact on key measures of hospital performance.

Impact

The evaluation demonstrated that centralised, data-driven coordination of hospital patient flows can meaningfully improve care delivery.

Hours spent waiting in the emergency department before admission decreased by 35%, inpatient length of stay decreased by 3.4%, and discharges completed before noon increased by 5.6%.

The evaluation also identified leadership, system adaptability, and communication as essential enablers of successful implementation.