Patient flow remains one of the toughest operational challenges hospitals face today. Rising patient complexity, staffing shortages, and manual coordination across care teams can make it difficult to move patients through the hospital efficiently.
At Boston Medical Center (BMC), improving patient flow meant rethinking how discharge planning was done across the organization.
In a recent discussion hosted by Becker’s Healthcare, Christopher Manasseh, MD, Associate Chief Medical Officer of Inpatient Operations at Boston Medical Center, joined Jason Cohen, MD, Chief Medical Officer of Inpatient at Qventus, to discuss how BMC transformed its inpatient operations.
The result: 3,200+ bed days of new capacity, created by improving discharge coordination and reducing excess days.
The challenge: manual work and inconsistent discharge planning
Boston Medical Center serves a complex patient population as the largest safety-net hospital in the Northeast. Like many health systems, the organization faced several operational challenges that made improving patient flow difficult.
According to Dr. Manasseh, discharge planning processes were not standardized across teams and units. Care teams spent significant time managing outlier cases, while missing opportunities to proactively coordinate patients who were likely to go home.
At the same time, staff were spending too much time on manual tasks, making it difficult to scale improvement efforts across the hospital.
“We needed something that everybody could adopt,” Dr. Manasseh explained during the discussion. “Ideally a tool that would help us establish a workflow that could be followed.”
Previous attempts to standardize multidisciplinary rounds had struggled to sustain momentum across departments. What BMC needed was a way to create consistent workflows while reducing the operational burden on frontline teams.
Embedding AI into everyday clinical workflows
Boston Medical Center partnered with Qventus in 2020 to support its patient flow transformation.
One key factor in adoption was that the solution integrates directly within the electronic health record (EHR), allowing clinicians and care teams to work within the systems they already use every day.
Instead of requiring teams to monitor separate dashboards or external tools, the technology surfaces information such as estimated discharge dates, care milestones, and discharge barriers directly inside the EHR. This reduces manual coordination and help teams focus on the next steps needed to move patients safely toward discharge.
Standardizing multidisciplinary rounds
Technology alone was not the answer. Boston Medical Center also focused on operational discipline to make patient flow improvements sustainable.
The hospital centered its efforts around three primary goals:
- Standardize discharge planning for every patient
- Reduce manual work so staff can focus more on patient care
- Create capacity without adding additional staff
To achieve these goals, BMC introduced structured multidisciplinary rounds across services and units.
Teams aligned around a consistent script and clear expectations for participation. Leadership reinforced the process through regular feedback and performance tracking.
By measuring multidisciplinary round participation and sharing results with clinical leadership, BMC was able to demonstrate the connection between consistent rounding practices and improved patient throughput.
Over time, these processes became embedded into the organization’s culture.
Results: creating capacity without adding beds
By improving how care teams coordinate discharges and identify barriers earlier, Boston Medical Center was able to significantly increase hospital capacity.
The results included:
- 3,200+ bed days of new capacity
- 18% reduction in mean excess days in 2025
- 1,157 more admissions in 2025
- 8.6% increase in discharge volume in 2025
- 25% increase in discharge volumes since go-live
These improvements allowed the hospital to care for more patients while using existing resources more efficiently.
Importantly, the gains were achieved without adding additional beds or staff.
Instead, the organization focused on reducing avoidable delays and ensuring that care teams had better visibility into discharge plans and barriers.
Why the approach worked
Many hospitals have attempted to improve length of stay or reduce excess days, but sustaining change can be difficult.
According to Dr. Manasseh, several factors helped Boston Medical Center maintain momentum.
First, the technology was embedded directly within the EHR, making it easier for clinicians and care teams to incorporate into their daily workflows.
Second, the hospital reinforced the operational processes that supported discharge planning, including multidisciplinary rounds and regular performance reviews.
Finally, the partnership between Boston Medical Center and Qventus continued to evolve as the organization’s needs changed.
This included supporting new initiatives such as hospital-at-home programs and continuing to refine models that help teams identify discharge opportunities earlier.
What other health systems can learn
Boston Medical Center’s experience highlights several important lessons for hospitals working to improve patient flow.
- Standardizing discharge planning across teams can significantly reduce delays and improve coordination.
- Technology must integrate directly into existing workflows to reduce friction for frontline staff.
- And sustainable improvement requires both operational discipline and tools that support care teams in real time.
By combining these elements, Boston Medical Center was able to unlock 3,200+ bed days of new capacity while improving the efficiency of inpatient care.
