Case Studies

True Collaboration Fosters Perioperative Excellence

Sound Anesthesia excels at fully staffing practices—even from the ground up. At a New England medical center, Sound replaced a departed group, overcame locums reliance, and rebuilt a struggling department marked by outdated policies and poor collaboration. Led by a physician-CRNA dyad, the team transformed culture, resources, and care delivery to achieve perioperative excellence.
Anesthesia

Unify EM + HM: One team. Smoother handoffs. Uncompromising care

When Emergency Medicine (EM) and Hospital Medicine (HM) operate in silos, front-end flow slows, handoffs vary, and sepsis execution falls out of sync. Sound can partner with you to unify EM and HM under one accountable, physician-led structure. With on-site leadership, shared priorities, and a repeatable daily cadence, we align teams for more predictable throughput, fewer avoidable delays, and a patient experience that reflects your standard. 
Emergency Medicine

Smoother discharges, shorter stays

When inpatient beds don’t turn, your emergency department backs up, operating room schedules fall behind, and teams burn out. Patients deserve timely, dignified care—and your hospital needs predictable flow and improved throughput.
Hospital Medicine

Sustainable, Affordable Hospital Medicine Practices

Sound Hospital Medicine’s goal is to bring sustainable affordable practice to our partners, from the first day of the contract to the last. We do that through our predictable practice model that ties compensation to results, offers better revenue cycle projection, and optimizes labor cost. The result is a contract that stays steady, and a relationship built on transparency: you’ll never experience hidden fees or surprise price hikes with us. Learn how we keep our costs stable over the life of your contract.
Hospital Medicine

Integrated Programs Remedy Long ED Hold Times with Impressive Results

Patients at a large southern medical center faced excessive hold times in the emergency department (ED) before being admitted to inpatient beds. In response, Sound’s Hospital Medicine (HM) and Emergency Medicine (EM) teams collaborated to develop strategies to reduce these delays. Sound teams communicated through a secure messaging platform, conducted daily rounds to address care barriers, and downgraded patients needing less intensive care. This teamwork shortened hold times and improved patient flow, trust, and morale among staff.
Hospital Medicine

Applying the Two-Midnight Rule for Medicare Advantage Patients

Beginning this year, the Two-Midnight rule — which requires that Medicare patients admitted to the hospital must stay at least two midnights to be classified as inpatients — now applies to Medicare Advantage patients as well as those covered by traditional Medicare. Despite this new application, some Medicare Advantage plans still deny inpatient claims based on outdated guidelines, leading to increased denials and a rise in peer-to-peer reviews and appeals. Sound Physicians’ Medicare Advisor solution helps hospitals ensure compliance by providing automated screenings and expert advice, significantly improving overturn rates for Medicare Advantage denials and increasing hospital revenue.
Physician Advisory Services

Sepsis Compliance: From Point of Contention to Point of Pride

A small hospital emergency medicine team struggled to implement protocols to satisfy the Sepsis bundle. Sound's medical director saw an opportunity to involve hospital leadership and clinicians in aligning and tightening the timing of processes to meet the complicated algorithm and demanding documentation for sepsis compliance. Through these changes, sepsis compliance improved by 65% within the first year, and within two years, the hospital was among the top 10% in sepsis compliance in the nation. See how they did it.
Emergency Medicine

Identifying avoidable delays early to improve length of stay

Facing a spate of length-of-stay challenges, the Sound Hospital Medicine team at a Southwestern medical center — including internal medicine residency students, supervised by Sound hospitalists —saw an opportunity to work more closely with case management on implementing new protocols to help patients discharge expeditiously and with the appropriate support and resources. Through multidisciplinary rounds, readmissions workflows, addressing avoidable delays, and providing education around the impact of social determinants of health on patient care, the Sound team in collaboration with case managers was able to reduce length of stay and reduce readmissions.
Hospital Medicine

Hybrid ICU Model: Better care for patients, cost savings

A medical center transformed its ICU care, doubling its patient capacity and achieving seven-day coverage with a unique hybrid approach while saving $500K and improving patient safety. Read now for a glimpse into healthcare innovation.
Critical Care

Split-flow model reduces ED wait times and throughput

A southeast medical center was facing a growing number of patients leaving their ED without treatment and rising length of stay. Sound's EM medical director proposed a proactive solution to increase ED nursing staff to implement a split-flow or rapid-care model to assess the acuity of patients to get patients seen faster. The split-flow model rapidly improved door-to-clinician time, increasing patient flow and satisfaction. Within months, the hospital saw LWOTs decrease, discharge LOS and admit LOS improve, as well as, capturing more revenue per patient with patients staying to get treatment.
Emergency Medicine

Dissolving Silos for Better Integrated Emergency Care

A community hospital faced various challenges in coordinating care between its adult and pediatric emergency departments, such as siloed care, declining throughput metrics, staffing vacancies, and a flat-rate compensation model. Collaborating with Sound Physicians, the hospital addressed staffing challenges and redesigned patient care, improving length of stay in both EDs, patient satisfaction, and reducing overall admit length of stay.
Emergency Medicine

Employed to outsourced: Collaboration and trust-building bring positive change

With the success at another hospital, a hospital in the same system transitioned their emergency and hospital medicine programs to Sound Physicians. Despite typical challenges moving from an employed to an outsourced model, Sound and the hospital implemented a successful transition with a tight timeline over the holidays. Within six months of implementation, the hospital has a fully staffed team, and clinician satisfaction and patient care improved.
Emergency Medicine

Centralized MDRs Improve Length of Stay

After seeing the positive impacts of Sound’s centralized multidisciplinary rounds (MDRs) at another hospital, including reducing length of stay (LOS), the case management team of a south-central US medical center agreed to pilot a similar program at their hospital. Within nine months of the pilot, the hospital saw a 0.5 day reduction in LOS and stabilization of case mix index and readmissions, among other positive impacts.
Hospital Medicine

Medicare Advisor: Timely and Appropriate Conversion from Observation to Inpatient

Medicare Advisor seamlessly integrates with your Sound hospital medicine program to ensure no Medicare fee-for-service patient is overlooked. Sound physician advisors monitor patients in real-time to validate the original admission order, so hospitals maintain compliance and maximize efficiency. On average, hospitals see a 36 percent decrease in long observation stays and a $700,000 increase in annual hospital revenue.
Physician Advisory Services

Leadership, Multidisciplinary Rounds Boost HCAHPS Scores

The hospital medicine team at a teaching hospital in Texas was experiencing lower-than-desired HCAHPS scores. Sound’s Medical Director and Clinical Performance Nurse implemented leadership discharge rounding with Sound patients improving survey responses, and saw an 8.4 percent absolute increase in HCAHPS scores within six months. They also implemented a formal approach to multidisciplinary rounds and saw an 0.8-day LOS reduction within five months.
Hospital Medicine

Modern Anesthesia Protocols, Top-Trained Leaders Drive Better Patient Outcomes

The Sound Anesthesia team brought clinical rigor and collaborative leadership to the hospital, helping to knit the team together and work confidently in lockstep. As the team blended anesthesiologists and CRNAs, they were more agile and efficient when it came to managing ICU support, where needed, and turnover times.
Anesthesia

Improving Quality and Performance with Integrated Clinical Services

In this hospital, Sound's integrated solution brings together hospital medicine, emergency medicine, and critical care to put the patient at the center of care. This integrated approach has led to reduced decision to admit times, reduced ED door-to-provider times, and reduced ED LWBS.
Emergency Medicine

Comprehensive Emergency Medicine Implementations: Building a Foundation for Clinical & Operational Excellence

Hospital leadership knew they had talented clinicians; however, they were unhappy with the regional support and leadership provided by their current emergency medicine group. They turned to Sound Physicians to smoothly implement programs and deliver operational excellence.