No more private rooms for medical staff

The S-building of Satapsykiatria, which was opened on the Pori’s Tiilimäki hospital campus in September 2023, sets an example. Previous research dictated the architecture of the building. The patients will be generally accommodated in single rooms, and the facilities have been designed to maximize occupancy, versatility, and adaptability. The occupancy rate for the treatment rooms set by the former Satakunta Hospital District would have been impossible if each staff member had their own room. In this case, twice as many rooms should have been built. 

“I’d call this a huge change in the mode of operation, practices as well as cultures. Many of our healthcare staff have been working in their own rooms for decades. This change is a joint effort over several years, and in the future, our staff will have to reserve room capacity as and when they need it. To operate according to this new model, we needed a functional space resource management solution, as it’s impossible to run room reservations on spreadsheets and without functional integrations with other healthcare systems. We did a lot of research, but we couldn’t find an existing solution, so we needed to develop one that met our needs and targets,” says Terhi Kauppila, Change Coordinator for Adult Outpatient Care at Satasairaala Hospital. 

Nortal Finland, an information technology and strategic digital business consultancy company, signed an agreement with 2M-IT, an ICT company in the social and healthcare sector, in autumn 2021 for a space resource management solution project for hospital districts. The objective was to optimize the existing facilities and resources in the new hospital building of Satapsykiatria. This way, the basic healthcare service process works seamlessly and, in a patient–centered way, in the care environment of the new hospital building, where healthcare professionals do not have personally assigned rooms. While the current occupancy rate of the existing facilities has been around 30%, the new Satapsykiatria outpatient clinic’s objective is to achieve an occupancy rate of approximately 80% through reception room optimization. 

The space resource management solution has been piloted from June 2022 onward in about 20 rooms in the current Satapsykiatria premises and will be gradually expanded. When the new hospital building is complete, there will be around 100 rooms available and about 250 users. 

“When an appointment has been made for a patient, the system will ensure that the reserved room is optimal for the needs of the patient and the required resources of the treatment. The day before the appointment, our solution automatically optimizes reservations to certain rooms suitable for each treatment. The prioritization of the rooms is based on a wide range of parameters, such as the treatment needs of the patient and the size of the room. The room reserved will be shown in the calendar of the professionals mentioned on the reservation. The integration with the medical record system, where patient appointments are made, saves a lot of time,” Petri Anttila, Nortal Finland’s Sales Executive in Healthcare sector, says. 

The healthcare staff of the Satasairaala Hospital has been very actively involved in developing the solution during the pilot period. Feedback is collected weekly, and functionalities are developed based on the feedback received. The public tender for the system resulted in a low-code implementation, which allows for fast and agile development. Features requested by the healthcare staff have been implemented and rolled out in weeks instead of months. At the same time, many functionalities are moved to the cloud, making further development easier and faster. 

“Without the pilot, such a space resource management solution for a hospital environment could not be developed and deployed, and the collaboration with 2M-IT and Nortal has been very close. The staff at Satapsykiatria have done a pioneering job using and developing the solution, as their contribution will be reflected throughout the hospital and the well-being services counties when the use expands and will influence how space resource management solution are developed and used in the future,” says Anssi Luoma, Project Director of the Satasairaala Hospital Renewal project. 

During the pilot phase, thousands of reservations were made per month. In the future, the data collected during the deployment can be used, for example, to anticipate possible peaks in demand for room reservations. When the solution is extended to the entire Satapsykiatria hospital, it will allow room capacity optimization at every level. In the future, using occupancy rates and other data will help avoid the need to rent additional space, for example, during spikes in demand or when some rooms are out of use due to renovation.