Pit Crews and the EM Team
What we can learn in the ER from a Nascar pit crew.
Read moreCategory Archives: Patient Flow
The ED Dashboard
Picture this: You are driving along a 4 lane highway and your passenger asks “Why are you driving so fast?” You glance at your dashboard and see that you are moving at the speed limit and reply “What do you mean? I’m driving the speed limit.” Your passenger says “Oh, it feels faster. Maybe it’s all the cars we are
Read moreED Boarding in 2018
It is 2018 and the we have been discussing ED boarding for well over 20 years. There are numerous resources that have suggested methods to combat the problem. What once was a problem easily fixed by moving people out of the ED and parking them on nursing units, has become an increasingly complex beast. If your hospital is struggling, like
Read moreEnvironmental Services..It Matters… A Lot !
The performance of your environmental services department is a critical step in your hospital’s patient flow. The ability of patients to enter your hospital as direct admissions or through the emergency department relies heavily on bed availability. Many institutions focus on clinical decision making and patient care when examining patient flow. However, focusing on the performance of your environmental services
Read moreED Flow Mind Map
ED flow is challenging. For all of those who struggle with defining various aspects of patient care in the emergency department, this is a mind map you may find helpful. (PDF) ED Flow Mind Map
Read moreA Six Hour Stay Is Not An ED Visit- It’s An Obs Admission !
Unless you work in a small hospital with critically low volume and a mostly empty ED, you are combatting crowding. ED crowding is at an all time high and the number of emergency departments in the US is shrinking as the number of ED visits increases. Though we once may have been able to accommodate lengthy evaluations and extensive imaging
Read moreProvider In Triage
So you have decided to embark on a provider in triage and you are building your process for the work area. What form will you choose? In this installment of the patient flow series, we will discuss some of the options that have been successful: 1) Physician triage: This process supplants the triage nurse with a physician. It is commonly
Read moreScribes: Pearls and Pitfalls
Much has been published regarding the use of scribes in the past few years. The position was born out of a need for reducing data entry time by physicians, while simultaneously increasing efficiency of the physician and allowing more time face to face with patients. Although they were once primarily utilized in emergency departments, scribes today are found in all
Read moreHolding Orders: Pearls and Pitfalls
As many hospitals battle the national physician shortage, emergency physicians are increasingly being asked to write inpatient orders. These are abbreviated orders meant to facilitate the patient’s transition to the inpatient unit and are typically named “holding”, “bridge”, or “interim” orders. When faced with the question of developing this process, a few things should be addressed. 1) Purpose It is
Read moreED Patient Segmentation
Many people have written about the segmentation of patient populations in the emergency department, based on acuity. Let’s take a look at it a little more closely in today’s installment of the patient flow series. Patient segmentation is the process of dividing patients (based on acuity in our case) and processing them through an emergency department visit differently based on the category they fall into.
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