Management challenges arising from COVID-19: reorganization of a healthcare setting and insights for patiet transfer workflows

The condition for the healthcare services’ provision, in a context of healthcare reorganization without increasing resources, is identified in the correct allocation of patients. During the COVID-19 pandemic and also in the times to come, access to high-intensity care will be subject to several challenges. There is, therefore, the need to promptly recognize the degree of patients complexity. It is essential to define criteria that make possible the identification of the patient correct allocation from the first access to the facility. In general, patient allocation should follow a multidisciplinary approach based both on the framing of needs by health professionals, and on an assessment that can make improvements to the health performance of the organization. Starting from the identification of three gaps in the literature: (1) low research rate for the study of inter-departmental workflows; (2) low research rate for studying the elements of patient transfer management; (3) and low research rate to analyze the coordination between medical and non-medical professionals, this work aims to identify the critical issues related to the introduction of a new setting in a hospital in Central Italy. To achieve the objective, a qualitative research study has been carried out. The results highlighted two aspects relating to the criticalities of the new structure. These will need to be taken into account to best support patient transfer activities. Analyzing clinical, organizational, managerial, and technical problems in an integrated way will help improve the management efficiency of healthcare organizations as a whole