In the United States and Europe, hospitals are struggling to provide care against a backdrop of economic volatility and troubled national health care systems.  
Hospitals bear the burden of uncompensated care, declining reimbursement rates and shrinking resources, while incurring billions of dollars in bad debt each year. Accrediting organizations have established new standards for patient flow. As a result, many hospitals are experiencing severe capacity challenges. The problems hospitals face are not simply operational but also strategic. Capacity constraints affect service quality and also physician and patient satisfaction. These constraints impede hospitals' ability to build new markets, service lines and revenue streams.
Patient flow integration and transformation is a solution to manage patient flow and address capacity problems by making key process and technology changes. If a hospital is successful in this initiative, then capacity management leads to a natural growth strategy and a corresponding increase in the revenue it can generate.
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