Is this a familiar situation?
Your main acute care hospital is at capacity. Rural facilities are holding patients in the emergency department, waiting for transfers. Other hospitals in your network have available beds and the right clinical capabilities, but patients are not being sent there. Not because they cannot manage the case, but because it falls outside of the standard referral pattern or your system isn’t working as a system.
This is the reality many health systems face when load balancing breaks down. It is not a failure of infrastructure or intent—it is a matter of process, visibility, and coordination.
What Is Load Balancing, and Why Is It So Challenging?
Load balancing is the practice of distributing patients across a health system based on real-time capacity, geography, and clinical fit. When executed well, it protects overburdened hospitals, speeds up access to care, improves patient outcomes, and makes the most of existing resources.
Yet most systems struggle to do it consistently.
Common barriers include:
- Limited visibility into capacity across the network
- A tendency to rely on the same hospitals or existing physician relationships for all transfers
- Multiple handoffs and unclear workflows
- A lack of centralized coordination and clinical oversight
The result is often a familiar one: delayed care, overwhelmed staff, underutilized assets, and missed opportunities to strengthen the system as a whole.
A Real-World Solution: Mercy Health Toledo
Mercy Health Toledo, a seven-hospital system serving the greater Toledo region, saw an opportunity to improve how patients moved across its network. Most transfers, even medically stable ones, were directed to its Level 1 trauma center. That hospital was consistently operating at or near capacity, causing delays and increasing pressure on care teams.
To address this, Mercy Health partnered with Conduit Health Partners and launched the Top Gun initiative.
Working as an extension of the health system, Conduit:
- Served as the single point of contact for all transfer requests
- Leveraged real-time capacity dashboards to identify open beds across the system
- Engaged transport vendors immediately, without waiting for a bed to be assigned
- Coordinated with clinicians to determine the right destination for each patient
This approach allowed Mercy Health to optimize its inpatient capacity, reduce delays, and shift the burden away from its highest-volume facilities.
The results:
- A 34 percent reduction in patient transfer time
- A 54 percent increase in direct admissions per week at metro hospitals
- A 12 percent decrease in the number of calls needed to complete a transfer
This initiative did more than streamline operations—it demonstrated how a collaborative partner can help a health system perform better without adding internal workload.
Click here to hear Mercy Health Toledo’s experience firsthand.
How to Strengthen Load Balancing in Your System
Improving patient flow does not always require a major overhaul. In many cases, small changes in process and structure can drive measurable impact. Here are several practices that can help:
- Look beyond historical patterns: Ask whether patients are being transferred to the right hospital for today’s capacity, not yesterday’s habit.
- Centralize your transfer process: Give your team one consistent point of contact with the clinical expertise to guide transfer decisions and reduce administrative burden.
- Use real-time capacity insights: Equip your staff with up-to-date information about bed availability and service line capabilities so they can make informed decisions quickly.
- Act before the bed is ready: With the right protocols, transfers can begin while downstream logistics are finalized. Every minute counts for the patient—and for your system.
- Partner with a team that understands your network: Conduit Health Partners brings clinical insight, operational expertise, and tailored protocols built around your system. We do not just manage the transfer. We support your strategy.
Load balancing is not about moving patients for purposes of speed and balance. It is about making informed decisions that connect patients with the right level of care, at the right facility, in the right amount of time.
Move Patients Smarter & Improve System Performance
If your hospitals are operating in silos, if your teams are stretched trying to coordinate transfers, or if your current approach is creating avoidable delays, it may be time to take a closer look at how your system functions as a whole.
Conduit Health Partners can help you bring clarity to your network, streamline decision-making, and ensure patients are placed where they can receive timely, appropriate care.
