How Hospital Command Centers Streamline Patient Flow: 5 Proven Strategies

Sacramento, California-based Sutter Health — an integrated not-for-profit health system with 27 hospitals — faced a common challenge: capacity management across multiple hospitals. Some of its facilities had unoccupied beds, while others were overcrowded. To improve operations and achieve balance, the system created a centralized command center in January 2025, according to a case study recently published by EpicShare.

Inspired by examples in other fields like NASA’s Mission Control, a number of multi-hospital health systems have launched command centers to balance patient distribution across facilities. These central hubs for capacity management can dramatically transform operations.

Hospital Command Centers Make a Measurable Impact

Creating a command center can yield significant operational improvements for health systems. Here are a couple of examples of results some AHA members have achieved after adopting the “mission control” approach.

• AdventHealth: Altamonte Springs, Florida-based AdventHealth opened its “Mission Control” center in 2019 to orchestrate patient care across nine campuses. Between its debut and fall 2022, the health system reported that the command center reduced ER admission-to-bed placement time by more than 23 minutes, lowered the phone call abandonment rate for the AdventHealth Transfer Center from 8% to 3% and decreased transport times for interhospital transfers by more than 15 minutes.
• Sutter Health: During the 2025 calendar year, the three pilot hospitals for Sutter’s command center project accelerated emergency department (ED) arrival-to-departure time by 8%, increased transfers and direct admissions by 29%, increased discharges by 4% and reduced net days above Geometric Mean Length of Stay by 27%, the equivalent of adding 12 beds per day.

5 Tactics Command Centers Use to Support Optimal Patient Flow

With the right resources and a strategic approach, health systems can fine-tune capacity management across multiple hospitals, improving operations and patient experiences alike. Here are proven tactics for better patient flow, drawn from the command centers at AdventHealth, Sutter and the Tampa (Florida) General Hospital (TGH) Care Coordination Center (C3).

1 | Standardizing Processes Across the Health System

One of Sutter Health’s strategies for improving capacity management is to establish standard workflows for patient transitions across the health system. Previously, each hospital had its own admission, transfer and discharge order sets and processes. For example, some facilities utilized admit orders, while others used bed requests.

To lay the groundwork for the command center and optimal capacity management, Sutter Health Nurse Executive for Capacity Management Amanda Movall worked with Epic’s Operational Services and convened nurses, providers, schedulers, surgery staff and environmental services staff to develop standard processes for admissions, transfers and discharges across all the system’s hospitals.

2 | Drawing on Real-Time Data to Support Agile Decision-Making

In addition to establishing consistent workflows across facilities, Sutter needed real-time capacity data to power its command center and improve patient flow. The health system created a Grand Central Capacity Management dashboard within its electronic health record system, pulling in data such as operating room and ED volumes, current bed requests, occupancy levels, expected discharges and blocked beds across all hospitals.

AdventHealth Mission Control also depends on real-time data (updated every three to five seconds) to support clinical efficiency. The health system’s command center provides live views of settings such as inpatient floors, outpatient centers and emergency rooms and leverages technology to pinpoint patterns. Similarly, TGH C3 — which launched in 2019, according to Modern Healthcare — relies on real-time data and predictive analytics to optimize patient flow, improve transitions and eliminate inefficiencies, as the command center’s web page explains.

3 | Predicting and Proactively Addressing Capacity Issues

A well-run command center can help a health system solve problems before they arise. For example, C3 enables TGH to anticipate surges in demand and respond accordingly during natural disasters like hurricanes.

AdventHealth’s Mission Control also forecasts issues like hospitals reaching capacity and staffing shortages. By tracking trends and sounding the alarm about potential problems, the command center enables the health system to mitigate and even prevent issues, paving the way for shorter hospital stays and better outcomes.

4 | Collaborating and Combining Clinical Expertise

At effective command centers, staff members with varying backgrounds join forces and combine their expertise to maximize efficiency and overcome obstacles to optimal patient flow. At Sutter, the capacity management team includes registered nurses as well as bed planning staff with ED, acute care and inpatient operations experience. This combination of clinical perspectives facilitates optimal patient placement across the system’s hospitals.

The situation is similar at AdventHealth Mission Control, where a team of more than 50 specialists — including nurses, transport techs and EMS and flight dispatchers — work together to oversee patient coordination around the clock.

5 | Continually Evaluating Performance and Refining Strategy

At Sutter, capacity management is an ongoing initiative: The command center team expanded to support 11 hospitals by February 2026, and they plan to eventually extend their efforts to all facilities in the health system. Each week, capacity planning staff convene with ED and operating room representatives to discuss delays and identify new tactics to optimize capacity management and patient flow across the system.

For additional information on hospital capacity management, read our Trailblazer report “Unlocking Capacity for Targeted Patient Populations.”