PROFESSIONAL OVERVIEW
Health Care Capacity Management Professionals

If you are interested in learning more about health care capacity management as a career, this page defines who capacity management professionals are, what they do every day, the path to becoming a capacity management leader, and why you should choose this career.

Hospital capacity management is a key and growing profession in the modern health care environment. The clinical workforce that provides care to patients is often burdened when hospitals are over capacity. As a result, managing patient flow in a hospital or other setting helps reduce inefficiencies and burnout at the clinical level, and improves clinical outcomes for patients.

More specifically, patient flow is of paramount importance in providing safe and high-quality care. With direct impact to multiple care areas, such as the emergency department, operating rooms, intensive care units, and even when patients transfer between hospitals, capacity management professionals directly impact the lives of nearly every patient that passes through a hospital today.

Who are health care capacity management professionals?

Hospital capacity management careers focus on optimizing the use of hospital resources to ensure efficient patient care and flow. They seek patient flow solutions and follow capacity management best practices to support patient safety and staffing needs. Hospital capacity management is a very interdisciplinary field. Professionals may be clinically trained, coming from nursing or medical backgrounds or may have administrative or management training.

What do health care capacity management professionals do?

Health care capacity managers operate and staff the command centers or departments within hospitals that control patient flow. This includes surge planning and response, administrative triage, patient transfer, and emergency department management. Where these professionals work in an organization can be different. Overall, their goal is to ensure that patients are assessed in a timely manner and that the providers’ and staff time is respected and responsive to evolving needs. Increasingly, capacity management professionals also are involved in advancing the science of hospital operations and capacity management – helping to understand the best practices and strategies in the field.

How can I become a health care capacity management professional?

There is not a single direct route to becoming a health care capacity manager. Because the profession’s day-to-day work often involves specialized knowledge, such as patient triage best practices, infection control knowledge and HIPAA awareness, many health care capacity managers come from a clinical background although many others come from a variety of non-clinical backgrounds. Capacity management professionals also must communicate effectively, analyze problems and generate resolutions.

Where are the jobs?

Many medical facilities employ a hospital capacity management department. Smaller organizations may also have health care capacity management professionals or individuals who perform that function on a clinic-wide or individual medical practice basis.

Why might I choose health care capacity management as a career?

You might consider becoming a health care capacity management professional if you enjoy challenging work and the opportunity to directly improve the lives and health of patients that seek care at a health care organization.