A hospital patient is ready to go home, but there’s one thing holding them back – it may be a scan, waiting on blood work, or family questions. From a patient and staff perspective this can be frustrating. The newly launched Duke Raleigh Operations Center (DROC) is helping to speed up the process.
Along a quiet hallway in the heart of Duke Raleigh Hospital is a small but bustling room that monitors all the comings and goings of our complex organization. It’s called DROC and its sole job is to keep all hospital departments operating together – through continuous communication – to improve patient flow and care across the hospital.
“The Operations Center helps bring it all together so that everyone is focusing on the same patients at the same time,” said Diane Mitchell, administration director, Duke Raleigh Hospital.
Launched in August 2022, DROC is a place where barriers are broken down and problems are solved together. At Duke Raleigh, any team member who runs into a road block to help move a patient along on their care journey can contact the center; this includes nurses, physical therapists, hospital medicine, housekeeping, emergency room staff, and beyond.
“Before the Operations Center existed, we prioritized our patients based on what worked best for individual departments,” said Zachary Cantor, service line director, Orthopedics & Spine, Duke Raleigh Hospital. “Now we are taking our departmental needs and aligning them with the entire hospital team to provide more efficient, quality care.”
“Since its inception, the Operations Center has had a big impact on patient flow in the ED,” said Dr. Timothy Plonk, Emergency Department medical director, Duke Raleigh Hospital. “Expediting discharges and decreasing length of stay at our hospital ultimately results in us being able to treat more patients from the community.”
Because we know that patients would rather be at home recovering, over the past five months DROC has helped reduce the number of days a patient has to spend in the hospital, and has made discharge easier and faster so patients can get home sooner.
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