S. Camillo Hospital in Rome Italy

S. Camillo Hospital in Rome Italy

How Performance Solutions helped reduce patient cycle time by 60% in Emergency Diagnostic Imaging at San Camillo Hospital in Rome, Italy.

“The GE project has been very valuable and helped us analyse the workflow and let us understand which were the critical aspects needing improvement.
… Whenever we should need to better understand a particular critical point of our organisation, we should surely use again this kind of projects.”

Dr. Miele, Responsible for the operating unit within the Emergency DI Department

Emergency Diagnostic Imaging Department description:

  • Average of 130 patients per day (CT, X-Ray, Ultrasound)
  • Average patient age is 53 years
  • 55% of patients are not mobile


Initial customer situation:

  • X-Ray exams cycle time is 48 minutes
  • CT exams cycle time is 58 minutes
  • Ultrasound exams cycle time is 59 minutes
  • Staff and patient dissatisfaction
  • Staff unable to identify causes driving patient waiting time


Project focus:

  • Reduce patient cycle time from arrival and registration to medical report completion


Root causes:

  • Absence of adequate and accepted registration procedure
  • No porters coordination
  • Time to find the porters is a critical factor
  • High system downtime per day
  • Shifts and lunch breaks no totally respected


Implemented solutions:

  • Defined adequate and accepted procedures
  • Dedicate one person to request registration
  • Add one porter per shift and give porters beepers to enhance communication
  • Turnover overlapping by 30 minutes
  • Introduce alert systems for request arrival


Customer benefits:

  • X-Ray exams cycle time is 26 minutes instead of 48 => 7 additional patients per day
  • CT exams cycle time is 35 minutes instead of 58 => 8 additional patients per day
  • Ultrasound exams cycle time is 43 minutes instead of 59 => 7 additional patients per day
  • Average of 60% reduction in X-Ray, CT and Ultrasound cycle time