Introduction: We tested the effect of a brief disposition process intervention on residents’ time to disposition and emergency department (ED) length of stay (LOS) in high acuity ED patients.
Conclusion: Prompting residents to enter administrative disposition orders in high acuity patients is associated with significant reduction in both time to disposition and ED LOS.
Introduction: The boarding of admitted patients in the emergency department (ED) is a major cause of crowding and access block. One solution is boarding admitted patients in inpatient ward (W) hallways.
Conclusion: Inpatient nurses and those who have never worked in the ED are more opposed to inpatient boarding than ED nurses and nurses who have worked previously in the ED. Primary nursing concerns about boarding are lack of monitoring and privacy in hallway beds. Nurses admitted as patients seemed to prefer not being boarded where they work.
Introduction: The state of emergency department (ED) crowding in Pennsylvania has not previously been reported.
Conclusion: ED crowding is a common problem in Pennsylvania and is worsening in the majority of hospitals, despite the implementation of a variety of interventions.
The economic benefits of reducing emergency department (ED) crowding are potentially substantial as they may decrease hospital length of stay. Hospital administrators and public officials may therefore be motivated to implement crowding protocols. We sought to identify a potential cost of ED crowding by evaluating the contribution of excess ED length of stay (LOS) to overall hospital length of stay.
Two crowding metrics are often used to measure emergency department (ED) crowding: the occupancy rate and the emergency department work index (EDWIN) score. To evaluate these metrics for applicability in our community ED, we sought to measure their correlation with the number of patients who left without being seen (LWBS) and determine if either, or both, correlated with our daily LWBS rate. We hypothesized a statistically significant positive correlation between the number of patients who LWBS and both crowding metrics.
Author Affiliation Troy E. Madsen, MD University of Utah, Division of Emergency Medicine, Salt Lake City, UT Anne Bennett, MD University of Utah, Division of Emergency Medicine, Salt Lake City, UT Steven Groke, BSN University of Utah, Division of Emergency Medicine, Salt Lake City, UT Anne Zink, MD University of Utah, Division of Emergency […]
Determine the effect that increased medical surgical (med/surg) bed occupancy has on the time interval from admission order to arrival in the bed for the patients admitted from the emergency department (ED).
