Craigavon Enterprises is a champion and expert in the implementation of Integrated Operations Centres across Canada. The list of benefits offered by an IOC are endless and the implementation of an IOC can significantly enhance a health system’s response in case of a pandemic event. Increasingly, benefits offered by an IOC will be expected as a new normal within advanced health care systems. 

Integrated Operations Centres (IOCs)

What is an IOC?
IOCs are the mission control  for a hospital, community of care, zone, or health authority with real-time data feeds shown on TV screens around the room. 

It encompasses:

• Real-time information to enhance overall decision making
• Predicted demand vs. actual demand
• Emergency department performance  and ambulance wait times
• Video feeds from ED, diagnostics, and other bottleneck areas
• Operating room efficiency, including  surgery start and end times
• Staffing and scheduling; over/ understaffing staffing for census and acuity
• Real-time discharge performance
• Quality statistics, including  length of stay, falls, readmission rates, staff injuries
• Hospitalist and clinical performance management
• Transition management – home care, LTC, community

How does an IOC function?
Allows organizations to behave in seemingly counterintuitive ways – exposes failure and problems as opportunities and as windows into the health of the system, helps visualize how all the parts fit together, helps expect unexpected events and develop the capability to manage them, empowers frontline experts to solve problems.

Critical IOC features and benefits:

1. Builds upon and integrates existing data sources and applications/systems.
2. Does not require to replace applications/systems, rather leverages existing.
3. Information is displayed on large screens in a highly visible format.
4. Uses predictive analytics to anticipate and prioritize workload/resources in an effort to streamline patient care.
5. Acts on thresholds to alert staff and prompt action (access/flow & quality)​
6. Support Public Health’s response through tracking, tracing and the use of predictive analytics. 
   
7. Have the ability to support community and long term care facilities, which could enable quicker response to COVID-19 or other emerging events in these settings.  
   
8. A critical piece in both supporting a timely, comprehensive and reliable activation plan and recovery plan. 
   

Examples of how IOCs were leveraged to successfully manage the COVID-19 pandemic:​

1. Regional view of beds, ventilators and staffing demands 
2. Agile staff scheduling to match critical care needs
3. Flagging rooms on precaution alerts
4. Easy identification of COVID-19 positive and suspect patients throughout each facility
5. Monitoring and projecting LOS impact of COVID-19 throughout inpatient units
6. Visibility of temporary surge beds added to handle increased volumes
7. Flag rooms that held a COVID-19+ patient, to ensure that the Environmental Services teams take the necessary precautions for their safety and for cleaning the room

Check out the teaser video our team created when implementing an IOC at Lions Gate Hospital, British Columbia:

Full overview of the IOC Transformation Journey:

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