KFSHRC Reduces Emergency Department Inpatient Bed Waiting Time by 75%
King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre (KFSHRC) in Riyadh has reduced the median emergency department boarding time from over 13 hours in 2023 to just 3.2 hours by mid 2025, achieving a 75% decrease that places the hospital among the top 5% of high-capacity academic medical centers worldwide in the emergency boarding time metric.
To achieve this transformation, KFSHRC implemented a comprehensive, data-driven process re-engineering program aimed at addressing the root causes of delays across the entire patient journey from entry to the emergency department through inpatient admission. The initiative was supported by the AI-enabled Patient Flow and Capacity Command Centre, which tracks patient flow in real time and forecasts potential bottlenecks before they occur.
According to a press release issued by the KFSHRC, the primary role of process re-engineering was to design more efficient care pathways based on accurate performance data and key operational indicators, supported by insights from the Command and Control Center, which automatically detects delays in patient flow, issues real time alerts to responsible staff for immediate intervention, and escalates unresolved issues to higher management levels, thereby accelerating decision making and strengthening accountability.
As part of this hospital-wide transformation, KFSHRC introduced new pathways that allow stable patients to be admitted directly from outpatient clinics without passing through the emergency department, while also accelerating morning discharges, expediting discharge medication processing, and streamlining laboratory and radiology diagnostics. Collectively, these measures expanded inpatient capacity, enabling the hospital to accommodate more complex cases such as organ transplantation and CAR T-cell therapy, while ensuring a flexible and efficient operating system capable of meeting rising demand.
The release added that this milestone is particularly significant given KFSHRC's scale—with over 1,500 beds dedicated to high-complexity care, including transplants, oncology, and immunotherapy—where optimizing inpatient throughput is one of the most critical factors in safeguarding patient safety and operational performance. KFSHRC is now preparing to share its experience with global peer institutions through site visits, capacity planning collaborations, and structured performance benchmarking programs.
The KFSHRC has been ranked first in the Middle East and North Africa and 15th globally in the list of the world's top 250 Academic Medical Centers for the second consecutive year and has been recognized as the most valuable healthcare brand in the Kingdom and the Middle East, according to the 2024 Brand Finance rankings. Additionally, in the same year, it was ranked among the world's best 250 hospitals and included in the World's Best Smart Hospitals list for 2025 by Newsweek magazine.
