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Patient Flow Consulting

Move patients. Free up capacity.

Impact Training Company helps hospitals find and fix the bottlenecks that slow patient movement, applying Flow Physics™ to throughput, support services, and the frontline teams who keep beds turning.

ThroughputLength of stayBoardingTransportEVS turnaroundDischarge

Where flow breaks down

  • ED boarding: patients waiting for beds
  • Bed assignment: slow placement decisions
  • Transport: delays moving patients
  • EVS turnaround: rooms slow to clean
  • Discharge: bottlenecks at the exit
900+ professionals trained Creator of Flow Physics™ Author, When Beds Don’t Move Owner of the CHT credential Senior Director, Ruck-Shockey Associates Speaker & educator

The capacity you need may already exist

Most hospitals don’t have a bed problem. They have a flow problem. Fix the flow, and capacity appears.

The basics

What is patient flow?

Patient flow is the movement of patients through the healthcare system, from admission through discharge.

When departments, staffing models, communication processes, and support services become disconnected, delays occur that impact throughput, patient experience, capacity, and operational performance.

Flow Physics™ provides a structured approach to identifying and addressing those barriers.

Where we focus

The bottlenecks we help solve

The places patient movement slows down, and where small fixes free real capacity.

🚧

Flow bottlenecks & boarding

ED boarding, bed assignment delays, and the hand-offs where patients get stuck.

Length of stay

The avoidable days that consume capacity and crowd the front door.

🚑

Transport delays

Moving patients on time, every time, with teams trained to standard. See the CHT →

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EVS & support services

Room turnaround, linen, and the support services chain behind every bed. Operations →

Proven results

Faster turnaround, real capacity

When EVS room turnaround drops, beds free up. At a 450-bed tertiary-care teaching hospital, discharge-to-clean fell from 93 to 58 minutes.

93→58

Minute room turnaround

Sustained average, 45 to 50 minutes at peak.

35 min

Faster, about a 38% reduction

Capacity recovered without adding beds.

AHE

Held to the 37.8-minute standard

Gains came from removing pre-clean delay.

See the full EVS case study →

Sound familiar?

Common challenges we help address

  • Delayed discharges
  • Throughput bottlenecks
  • Long room turnaround times
  • Transport delays
  • Capacity constraints
  • Staffing inefficiencies
  • Communication breakdowns
  • Process variation
  • Patient flow interruptions
  • Support service coordination issues
Who we help

Built for the people accountable for flow

CEOsCOOsCNOsChief Experience OfficersEVS DirectorsTransport DirectorsFacilities DirectorsSupport Services LeadersHospital Administrators
The method

The Flow Physics™ Framework

A structured path from diagnosis to durable change.

1

Assess

2

Diagnose

3

Quantify

4

Prioritize

5

Implement

6

Sustain

How Donald can help

Engagement options

Start small or go end-to-end, and each engagement builds on the last.

Typically 2–5 days

Diagnostic assessment

  • Workflow analysis & direct observation
  • Bottleneck identification
  • Financial opportunity analysis
  • Executive report & readout
Plan

Improvement roadmap

  • Prioritized recommendations
  • Quick wins to start now
  • 90-day implementation plan
  • Roles, metrics & escalation design
Ongoing

Implementation support

  • Hands-on coaching
  • Frontline & leadership development
  • KPI monitoring
  • Sustainability planning

Patient Flow consulting is delivered through Impact Training Company and supported by the operational consulting expertise of Ruck-Shockey Associates.

The full system

Support services that drive patient flow

Patient flow is not owned by a single department. Throughput is influenced by multiple support service functions working together throughout the patient journey.

Experience

Healthcare operations experience you can trust

Donald Sipp Jr. has spent more than two decades helping healthcare organizations improve operational performance through leadership, consulting, education, workforce development, and process improvement.

His work has focused on improving patient flow, support services performance, workforce effectiveness, and operational efficiency across healthcare environments. About Donald →

MBAPMPCHESPRESECHTI-2CMIP Healthcare AuthorNational SpeakerConsultant
Patient FlowThroughput ImprovementEnvironmental ServicesPatient TransportLinen OperationsFood & NutritionFacilities OperationsWorkforce DevelopmentLeadership DevelopmentStaffing OptimizationOperational AssessmentsProcess Improvement
Get started

Request a Patient Flow assessment

A focused review of where your flow breaks down, with a clear path to capacity.

Schedule a consultation

The assessment includes

  • Throughput review
  • Support services evaluation
  • Bottleneck identification
  • Operational recommendations
  • Executive summary
FAQ

Common questions

What is patient flow?
Patient flow is the movement of patients through the healthcare system from admission through discharge. When departments, staffing models, communication processes, and support services become disconnected, delays occur that impact throughput, patient experience, capacity, and operational performance.
What is Flow Physics?
Flow Physics is a structured framework created by Donald Sipp Jr. for identifying and addressing the barriers that slow patient movement and support services performance across a hospital.
How does a patient flow engagement work?
Engagements begin with an assessment of where patients wait, then move to redesigning the processes, staffing, and support-service hand-offs that create bottlenecks. Scope ranges from a focused assessment to a full redesign, based on what your data shows.
Which support services affect patient flow the most?
The functions behind every bed decision, especially environmental services and patient transport. Slow room turnaround and transport delays are among the most common throughput bottlenecks, along with the hand-offs between departments.
Who is patient flow consulting for?
The people accountable for throughput, length of stay, boarding, and capacity: operations and nursing leadership, patient flow and throughput teams, and the executives who own hospital capacity.
What experience is behind this work?
Patient flow work is led by Donald Sipp Jr., creator of the Flow Physics framework and author of When Beds Don't Move, with hands-on healthcare operations experience across the support services that move patients.
Contact

Talk to us about patient flow

Tell us about your organization and where flow breaks down, and we’ll follow up.

Prefer email? Write to info@ImpactTrainingCompany.com.

Work with Donald