E36 – Command Centers: Transforming Access, Flow, and Capacity
The creation of a Capacity Command Center improves system-wide access, patient flow, and capacity while reducing unnecessary processes and positively impacting patient, family and staff experience. The Capacity Command Center creates an agile system to manage Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center complex hospital system with the ability to flex into an incident command center for emergency response. The goal, as stated by CCHMC: “To centralize capacity management across our enterprise optimizing efficiencies to improve access.” Organizational Benchmarking of various command centers showed increased savings through increased transfers, improved transport dispatch time, and faster bed assignment translating significant operational savings.
This is the story of the process of the creation of the Capacity Command Center told from the perspective of the Owners, the Architects, and the Engineers: from the spark of idea, the institutional strategy that drove its inception, the internal leadership that championed its cause, the research into what other institutions have done, the incorporation of precedent elements from industry and healthcare into a unique space typology, the incorporation of many and varied stakeholders into a visioning process, the search for the right physical location, the provision of technical solutions through design-construction team collaboration, and building it for future flexibility.


