KNOXVILLE, Tenn., Nov. 11, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Crothall Healthcare announced the opening of its first national call center for patient transportation at the Performance Center, located in Knoxville, Tennessee. The premium provider of healthcare support services reported receiving its inaugural call today at 6:15am from one of its current clients. The centralized, high-tech facility is expected to play an integral role in driving patient throughput as well as providing logistical support to onsite patient transport teams, enabling process improvement for client hospitals.

With 24/7 coverage available throughout the United States, geographically focused Patient Flow Coordinators (PFCs) are certified to deliver remote oversight of their client hospitals' onsite transport process by leveraging innovative task management applications and dashboard analytics that provide real-time visibility into performance, trend analysis, and predictive staffing, promoting the ability for transporters to consistently be in the right place at the right time.

The Performance Center is expected to provide client locations with several key benefits, not the least of which is 24/7 "virtual" service without the expense of onsite call center installation. Patient transporters onsite at hospitals receive dispatches from Performance Center PFCs via TeamFlow™ to Android phones. The Androids are also used to update status and store real-time data in the TeamFlow software. The application immediately updates PFC dashboards as information is transmitted.

"What's great about the versatility of this technology is that it promotes greater management visibility and availability on the floors, working directly with their teams and customers," commented Division Vice President Kevin Yon. "Historically, Patient Transportation managers have had to spend a lot of time in the office mining information from computer reports to analyze the cause of outliers. With our Dashboard 2.0 analytics crunching the numbers and looking for trends, managers can be completing a more meaningful GEMBA walk using our real-time data to proactively head off potential complications.  Our PFCs, informed by Dashboard's real-time visibility into performance, trend analysis, and predictive staffing, are trained to interpret onscreen reports and alert onsite teams of outliers."

Another key benefit beyond the improvements to productivity and service performance the center enables is the speed and dexterity of transporter mobile apps via handheld devices and the use of instant messaging to promote an enhanced patient experience.  "All our communications to the transporters are designed to keep them firmly at their patients' sides, providing greater comfort and compassion during one of the patient's most vulnerable events," explained Yon.

The Performance Center's training lab certifies PFCs' understanding of the complexity of each of our partner hospital's facilities by immersing them in replicated real-time transportation situations using the TeamFlow simulator with a coach on deck.  Similar to flight simulation training, our coach will augment the training by increasing the number and frequency of unplanned events or process delays to ensure the PFCs not only become experts on specific hospital geographies and priorities, but experience the need to course correct and adjust for the unplanned events that can occur during service delivery.

"We are also excited that our clients who have fully adopted Lean methodologies can rely on the Performance Center to drive what is important to them," said Yon: "Our ability to have management on the floors, engaging patients and staff, improving performance, and driving stronger, more efficient outcomes."

About Crothall HealthcareCrothall Healthcare is a national provider of specialized, high-quality support services exclusively to healthcare: Environmental Services, Facilities Management, Patient Transportation, Clinical Equipment Solutions, and Laundry. Crothall serves over 1200 healthcare clients across 38 states.

SOURCE Crothall Healthcare