Baptist Health Arkansas increases patient transfers by 23% with LeanTaaS AI-powered inpatient flow optimization

Baptist Health Arkansas, operating 10 acute-care hospitals with ~2,500 licensed beds, struggled with inconsistent discharge planning, lack of data transparency, and siloed decision-making across individual hospitals. Despite implementing a system-wide operations command center, disparate processes created bottlenecks and limited centralized operational efficiency. The organization needed to shift from a reactive to a proactive decision-making model to improve patient access and system-wide coordination.

Baptist Health implemented LeanTaaS' iQueue for Inpatient Flow, starting with flagship Little Rock and North Little Rock hospitals and the command center, then expanding to Conway and Fort Smith campuses. The platform provided AI-driven discharge date predictions, real-time patient status visibility, shared dashboards, and automated escalation alerts. This created a unified source of truth for capacity protocols, enabling standardized care transitions and proactive bottleneck resolution across the network.

The implementation delivered a 23% increase in patient transfers and a 13% reduction in transfer declines, significantly improving system-wide flow. Discharge processing time was reduced by 32%, with early order entry before 11am increasing by 11% and before 2pm by 14%. The health system also achieved a 34% reduction in GMLOS variance, a 25% reduction in opportunity days, and a 6% increase in overall admissions.

• Centralizing capacity visibility across previously siloed hospitals through a single platform enables proactive transfer management and reduces transfer declines.
• AI-driven discharge predictions combined with shared dashboards and automated escalations align multi-disciplinary teams around discharge priorities, accelerating patient throughput.
• Phased rollout starting with flagship facilities and command center before expanding to additional campuses allows for iterative adoption and system-wide standardization.