Three Ways Xpress® Supports Long-Term Vision for Hospitals

• The workforce. This includes increased use of technology to improve workflows and save valuable employee time. According to a Deloitte workforce technology study, automation technologies, along with artificial intelligence, can cut in half the amount of time revenue cycle staff spend on mundane tasks. This will become essential in staff retention and optimizing their capabilities.
• Patient care. A continued focus on patient safety and optimized outcomes will require hospitals to put to practical use emerging tools, such as AI, to provide more intelligent data that can help clinicians more quickly identify underlying health issues that may have otherwise been overlooked.
• Cost control. Hospital expenses continue to surge and remain elevated. Recruiting and sustaining a highly skilled workforce continues to be the largest operating expense for hospitals. Budget planning must also account for upgrading older facilities with the infrastructure required to support emerging technologies. The expectation, however, is that these investments will enable hospitals to treat more patients efficiently while elevating the overall quality of care.

Developing a successful long-term vision that covers all evolving focus areas including those above, requires re-evaluating and updating how care is currently delivered throughout the hospital, which can involve redesigning workspaces and workflows. Integrating advanced technologies, such as AI, will become key to developing a more responsive, efficient workforce. All this must be supported by a more flexible, scalable infrastructure with the agility necessary to provide a wider range of healthcare delivery mechanisms, while accommodating future expansion. 

• Flexible designs to meet changing configurations. The bulky and space-intensive multiple station model used in older floorplans can now be replaced with a single station designed to handle multiple carriers. This smaller footprint frees up space in newly designed areas or those which have been repurposed. Xpress components can overlay and integrate with an existing tube system enabling a seamless upgrade of older technology and expanding its reach. 
• Increased transmission efficiency to optimize patient care. Faster delivery of materials throughout the hospital helps the clinical team serve more patients more quickly. After implementing Xpress, speeds up to 99% faster have been reported through advanced queuing and staging which has been especially beneficial in serving high traffic labs, pharmacies, and emergency departments. Distances of a mile or more can now be easily covered, a strong benefit for hospitals with remote facilities. This includes urban hospitals in dense areas with labs and other facilities located across town.
• Improved workflow to support the workforce. The ability to simultaneously transport multiple carriers through the Xpress pneumatic tube network frees clinicians from a time-consuming, repetitive task, saving them considerable time that can be spent performing more high value, patient-facing work. 

Our Design Assist services bring technical expertise into the design process to improve efficiency, serviceability, and long-term performance. Engaging Design Assist during pre-design or schematic phases allows teams to take a consultative approach that looks beyond drawings to support the overall system vision and avoid future challenges.

Using tools such as simulations and 3D modeling, Design Assist helps ensure proposed designs align with space planning, performance, and operational needs. Early collaboration ultimately leads to a more effective and constructible design.

Xpress helps hospitals gain the agility, efficiency, and reliability needed to support long-term vision.

To remain competitive in the years to come, hospitals must increasingly focus on developing a long-term vision that puts them ahead of the curve, and enables them to keep pace with future growth and rapidly evolving healthcare needs. 

Strategic planning is essential to support long-term vision, not only for expanding capacity but also for designing facilities, workflows, and technologies that can adapt to changing patient populations, emerging care models, and increasing workforce demands. By prioritizing a scalable infrastructure, operational efficiency, and effective resource management, hospitals will be better positioned to deliver high-quality, efficient care well into the future while remaining resilient in the face of ongoing challenges. 

Flexible, intelligent pneumatic tube networks will help hospitals maintain best practices in efficiency, leaning into a more agile care environment that ensures transported materials reach the right place at the right time in an increasingly complex care environment. By integrating Xpress into long-term planning, hospitals will be better prepared to meet the challenges that lie ahead in the next generation of healthcare innovation.