Door-to-door time

Definition

How long a patient is inside the building, from walking in to being discharged.

Why It Matters

It is the operating metric this format lives on, because the competitor is an emergency room's wait and the whole proposition is being faster than it. It also sets throughput directly: shaving ten minutes on a ninety-minute visit adds capacity without adding a room. Ask for the distribution and not the average, since the slow tail is usually one workflow, and read a long one as either a staffing gap or a layout problem the lease may not let you fix.