Patent ID: 8612252

Claim:
A method for facilitating the physical provision of health care services to a plurality of patients, the method comprising: (a) aggregating, at one or more electronic devices, information associated with the provision of health care services to patients from one or more systems, including an admission/discharge/transfer system and a bed management system; (b) displaying, via software, at an electronic touch-screen display, some of the aggregated information, the software being configured to (i) display information associated with a housekeeping status of one or more beds in a health care environment, and allow a user to edit the displayed information associated with the housekeeping status of such one or more beds, (ii) allow a first administrative user associated with a health care facility to define a list of discharge milestones and indicate that one or more of the defined discharge milestones are required for all patients within the health care facility, (iii) allow additional administrative users each associated with a respective unit of the health care facility to each select, from the discharge milestones defined by the first administrative user, milestones specific to a particular unit, (iv) display information associated with a planned discharge time, (v) display information associated with one or more defined discharge milestones for each one of a plurality of patients, and allow a user to edit the displayed information associated with one or more discharge milestones for one or more patients, (vi) display information in both a floor plan view and a tabular view, (vii) display information regarding the identity of one or more health care providers assigned to a patient, and allow a user to edit the displayed information regarding the identity of one or more health care providers assigned to a patient: (viii) determine discharge milestones used most frequently on a unit of the healthcare facility and display, to a user, a report conveying the determined discharge milestones, and (ix) determine the average time to completion of a discharge milestone compared to a planned discharge time and display, to a user, the determined average time to completion; (c) receiving authentication information; (d) validating the received authentication information; (e) receiving, via the electronic-touch screen display, user input related to some of the displayed information associated with the provision of health care services to patients; and (f) displaying, via the electronic touch-screen display, updated information associated with the provision of health care services to patients, the updated information being updated based at least in part on the received user input; (g) wherein the electronic touch-screen display is not a part of a computer work station.