CHI Franciscan and GE Healthcare Launch AI-Powered Command Center to Optimize Hospital Care Delivery Across Washington State

According to Leifeng.com, CHI Franciscan has announced a partnership with GE Healthcare to establish a mission control center. The center will leverage AI and advanced analytics to enhance the capabilities of eight acute care hospitals, coordinate equipment and resources across the healthcare system, streamline care delivery, and improve health outcomes.

By transmitting real-time data across key aspects of patient care—such as demand forecasting, inter-facility transfers, care progression, and discharge planning—staff can direct resources to high-demand areas and provide healthcare institutions with the critical information needed for patient care.

With 1,300 beds, CHI Franciscan is one of the largest healthcare systems in Washington State, recording nearly 325,000 emergency department visits and over 300,000 inpatient days annually. It generates total revenue of $2.45 billion and employs a team of more than 12,000 physicians, nurses, and staff members.

“With the continuous growth of regional healthcare demands, we are constantly seeking innovative solutions to enhance the accessibility of primary care providers and services in our community, delivering the highest quality of care and experience for our patients and their families. The establishment of the Mission Control Center serves this very purpose,” said Ketul J. Patel, CEO of CHI Franciscan.

According to Leifeng.com(Official Account: Leiphone)Understood. Inspired by NASA’s Mission Control, CHI Franciscan’s Mission Control features an 18-screen video wall displaying 12 applications. These applications provide real-time data from each hospital and leverage artificial intelligence algorithms to identify potential issues in real time, enabling care teams to proactively address problems rather than merely reacting when they arise.

CHI Franciscan is the first hospital in Washington State and the fifth globally to leverage this cutting-edge technology to advance patient care. CHI Franciscan is also the first hospital to deploy Microsoft Azure, migrating Protected Health Information (PHI) to the cloud to provide high-level protection and security, thereby helping to safeguard the privacy of patient data.

Jeff Terry, CEO of the GE Clinical Command Center, stated, “CHI Franciscan’s commitment to patient innovation is evident from the very first interaction. You can see its mission control structure: an off-site center with satellites in three hospitals, staffed by on-duty physicians and leveraging AI to monitor patient conditions. It is gratifying to see that CHI Franciscan’s Mission Control Center is already making an impact; today is just the beginning. There is much work ahead to elevate it to even greater heights. It is an honor to serve the CHI Franciscan team.”

The technology of the Mission Control Center not only provides an overall overview of the eight hospitals in the system, but also offers patient-level detailed information to support improvements, such as:

Appropriate Bed, Location, and Time:Centralized bed management enables staff to optimize bed allocation workflows, prioritize patient placement, and coordinate transfers across external and internal systems. Essentially, staff can effectively manage patients throughout the system, ensuring they are assigned to appropriate beds or discharged in a timely manner.

Reduce Wait Times:By analyzing real-time data and addressing potential delays, the Mission Control Center has reduced patient wait times for inpatient beds in the Emergency Department or Post-Anesthesia Care Unit (PACU).

Staffing:AI accurately predicts patient census levels 24 and 48 hours in advance. By forecasting future demand, actions can be taken one to two days ahead of time to fill anticipated staffing gaps, ensuring patients receive care from appropriate care teams.

Streamlining the Discharge Process:Real-time data and predictive analytics track each patient’s hospital stay, including identifying potential care delays or bottlenecks, reducing wait times, and prioritizing diagnostic tests to facilitate earlier discharge and free up beds for other patients in need. For example, if a patient requires a CT scan before discharge but the CT schedule is already backed up with patient data, the command center will flag the patient to expedite the scan.

Located at Gig Harbor, the Mission Control Center serves as the central hub for system-wide collaboration with three satellite locations: St. Francis Hospital (Federal Way), Harrison Medical Center (Silverdale), and St. Joseph Medical Center (Tacoma). The multidisciplinary team at the Mission Control Center, comprising physicians, hospitalists, nurses, facility representatives, and other healthcare administrators, is responsible for expediting admissions, monitoring bed capacity and patient transfers, and directing patients to the appropriate CHI Franciscan facilities.

In the future, CHI Franciscan will rapidly expand into other key areas, such as observation patient management, discharge planning, post-acute care programs, surgical workflows, and census forecasting.Leiphone

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