Software Strives To Shrink Emergency Room Waits
Source: Isha Salian and Trisha Thadani
Photo: Paul Kuroda, Special To The Chronicle
Editor’ s note: Here are five Bay Area startups worth watching this week.
Long waits at the emergency room are the norm at many hospitals, and a source of frustration for patients and doctors. The emergency department at St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Stockton, operated by Dignity Health, sees about 275 patients each day. In the past two months, it has been able to shrink the amount of time it takes for a doctor to attend to an emergency room patient from around 30 minutes to less than 20 minutes.
What’s changed, according to Chairman of Emergency Medicine Dr. Benjamin Wiederhold, is bringing in Qventus, an analytics tool made by a Los Altos company of the same name.
Qventus’ software helps health care institutions manage staffing in hospitals and pharmacies. It processes data, including the number of patients and doctors in the hospital, the length of wait times, and where slowdowns are occurring, so that, for example, more nurses can be sent to the area of the hospital where they are most needed, or managers can get the latest information on what rooms need to be cleaned. It’s being used in around 50 hospitals nationwide.
Founder and CEO Mudit Garg used to be with a consulting firm, where he worked with health care providers to reduce inefficiencies. “The boring, unsexy operational problems were constantly coming across as really holding back,” he said.
Qventus provides a display that the company calls “air traffic control for hospitals” to see how efficiently the facility is running. It also sends “nudges” in texts, phone calls or email to health care providers to prevent bottlenecks and redirect staff to busier areas. Using machine learning, the system observes what factors are important to each hospital and suggests ways to improve.
The company announced a collaboration with Sutter Health on Sept. 1 to install its software in 30 pharmacies in Sutter’s system. The startup, founded in 2013, has 50 employees and about $15 million in funding, Garg said.
Wiederhold said efficient hospitals make changes to their staffing and processes based on data that’s a month old. With Qventus’ analytics, his emergency department can make changes on the fly, and can tell in about three hours if those changes made a difference.
Qventus “allows us to see the entire department and have a real, live pulse on where the pinch points are and be able to respond to them,” Wiederhold said. “It’s a very powerful tool.”
Also trending:
Grokker
What it does: A social network for wellness, with hundreds of thousands of subscribers. Users watch training videos on fitness, cooking, meditation and yoga and then interact with coaches and other users.
What happened: The company is signing new corporate clients, and CEO Lorna Borenstein is speaking at conferences this month and next.
Why it matters: People and businesses are making wellness a priority. “Companies are realizing to attract and retain employees, they need to genuinely care about their well-being,” Borenstein said.
Headquarters: San Jose
Funding: $22.5 million, according to Borenstein.
Employees: 155
Testlio
What it does: Assembles testers to find bugs in mobile, Web and desktop applications. More than 50 companies, including Microsoft, Salesforce and Lyft, are customers.
What happened: The company is organizing webinars and taking part in four conferences in the next month.
Why it matters: Companies keep releasing new products and software updates. These updates must be tested before they are made available to customers, so quality-assurance teams work with services like Testlio to make the process faster and more thorough.
Headquarters: San Francisco
Funding: $8.5 million, according to co-founder and CEO Kristel Kruustük.
Employees: 65
Lantern
What it does: An online program to help people manage stress, anxiety and depression. Users are connected to behavior coaches, who check in with them periodically.
What happened: Ali Cherry, director of marketing for the company, said it is unclear why Lantern was trending on Crunchbase last week. It was featured in the Wall Street Journal this summer, but has otherwise been relatively quiet.
Why it matters: The cost and stigma around therapy may deter people from seeking mental health help. As people become more comfortable with online services, Lantern may provide a way to tackle concerns about emotional health.
Headquarters: San Francisco
Funding: $21.4 million, according to Cherry.
Employees: 39
Eightydays.me
What it does: Helps users plan multicity travel, by working out routes and destinations.
What happened: It is unclear why this startup, which could not be reached for comment, was trending last week.
Why it matters: Planning travel — from plane tickets, to trains and hotels — often requires using several different websites. This site is a one-stop shop.
Headquarters: San Francisco
Funding: $190,000, according to Crunchbase.
Employees: 1-10, according to Crunchbase.
Isha Salian and Trisha Thadani are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: isalian@sfchronicle.com, tthadani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Salian_Isha, @TrishaThadani
How we pick the companies
Every week, The Chronicle and Crunchbase, a San Francisco firm that tracks key businesses in technology, analyze private Bay Area companies based on their financial backing, employees and activity on Crunchbase. We feature five that are moving up in the ranks. For more information on the companies: www.crunchbase.com
Photo Caption: The software Qventus, on monitors in the ER at St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Stockton (operated by Dignity Health), keeps track of patients and their immediate needs. At right is Rachelle Valdez, Patient Registration Supervisor and Leandra Uribe, an Access agent.
http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Software-strives-to-shrink-emergency-room-waits