Patent ID: 7716066

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for placing a patient in a location of a healthcare facility, comprising: (a) maintaining a database of a computer system, the computer system being configured such that the computer system communicates with a network, said maintaining comprising the steps of, (i) storing, in the database of the computer system, (A) patient attributes for a plurality of patients, and (B) bed attributes for a plurality of locations of the healthcare facility; (ii) continually monitoring a patient admissions/discharge system of the healthcare facility, and (iii) based on said monitoring, continually updating the data stored in the database of the computer system, the data stored in the database of the computer system being updated based on information from the patient admissions/discharge system contained in transactional messages, the information being automatically fed into the database; and (b) while maintaining the database in said step (a) by continually monitoring the patient admissions/discharge system and updating the data stored in the database, (i) receiving, by the computer system via the network from a client device configured to facilitate the provision of healthcare services, using a client server communication protocol, an identification of one of the plurality of patients whose patient attributes are stored in the database, the identification of one of the plurality of patients corresponding to a patient selected by a healthcare professional from a list of patients presented via a user interface provided by an end-user application for healthcare professionals loaded on the client device configured to facilitate the provision of healthcare services, and (ii) based on the patient identification received in step (b)(i), matching, by the computer system, requirements of the identified patient to available resources of the healthcare facility by comparing patient criteria of the identified patient with bed attributes stored in the database, the patient criteria comprising patient attributes for the identified patient that are stored in the database.