How Nurses Cut Hospital Stays for People with Frailty (and what Agile teams can learn)

A five-nurse specialist team redesigned care for frail patients, slashing average hospital stay from ~18 days to ~2.4 days in six months. This is an ~86% reduction while improving experience and saving millions!

Here’s my Agile angle (real-world moves you can borrow):

  1. Treat assessment like fast triage: front-load expertise early to prevent long tail delays (NHS guidance ties early frailty teams to shorter LOS).

  2. Make a “same-day flow” lane: prioritize small, testable steps that discharge or decisively progress work within 24–48 hours (Frailty SDEC models show impact).

  3. Measure stability, not busyness: track time-to-first-decision and aging work; spotlight blockers daily.

  4. Run tiny service experiments: one hypothesis at a time (e.g., earlier specialist review) and keep what reduces average length of stay.

Coaching Moment: What’s our “early specialist” move that, if done within the first day, would prevent most downstream delays?