Patient Flow Enewsletter
Volume 2, Issue 5
Wednesday, October 5, 2005
In this Issue:
-
Best Practices: Triage Bypass Improves Door-to-Bed Times
- Perspectives: Pay for Performance in Emergency Medicine
- 2005 Regional Conferences: Perfecting Patient Flow: Proven Solutions to ED Crowding
- Coming Soon: New Initiative Offers Expert Coaching and Best Practices
- Coming Soon: National Patient Flow Benchmarking
Best Practices
Triage Bypass Improves Door-to-Bed Times
Hospital EDs commit huge amounts of time and resources to devising solutions to ease throughput problems. One such hospital, St. Joseph Medical Center in Towson, Maryland, built a bigger, state-of-the-art ED in November 2004 in hopes of solving their throughput problems, only to find patient flow indicators did not improve. Joseph Twanmoh, M.D., F.A.C.E.P., President, Resources Consulting, spoke to Urgent Matters about the triage bypass initiative that helped improve patient flow in St. Joseph's ED. He worked at the hospital as a consultant and helped implement the triage bypass system.
Perspectives
Pay for Performance in Emergency Medicine
To gain perspective on the issue of Pay-for-Performance (P4P) in emergency departments, Urgent Matters spoke with Christopher Krubert, M.D., M.B.A., a Physician Partner of Clinical Operations for ApolloMD Physician Services, an emergency physicians group based in Atlanta, Georgia. As a physician who often rotates through different EDs, as well as consults on the area of clinical and operational quality, Dr. Krubert is able to bring a unique perspective to this concept.
2005 Regional Conferences
Perfecting Patient Flow: Proven Solutions to ED Crowding
October 13-14, 2005 in Atlanta, GA
October 27-28, 2005 in Las Vegas, NV
Conference Sessions include:
- Improving ED Processes with Point of Care Testing
- Meeting the JCAHO Patient Flow Standard
- Building a New ED: Creating Your Field of Dreams
- Lead with Lean Workshop
- Methods to Improve the ED Process of Patients with ACS
Coming Soon
Look for updates on these two initiatives in future E-Newsletters.
New Initiative Offers Expert Coaching and Best Practices
Urgent Matters is launching a new Membership Program to help hospitals address the issues of patient flow and ED crowding. As participants in the program, hospital members will receive 1) dedicated time with experts and hospital leaders to advise you on your patient flow initiatives, 2) access to an online tool kit of best practices, and 3) opportunities to interact and share with hospitals from across the country.
Key features of the online tool kit include:
- New proven strategies to perfect triage, bed management, staffing practices, admissions and discharge, and diversion management
- Quick search function to find strategies tested in hospitals that look like your own
- Implementation tools and tactics
- Strategy ranking based on return on investment and ease of use
National Patient Flow Benchmarking
Be a part of a national patient flow benchmarking survey and determine how your hospital compares with the rest of the country. Are you a high performer or does your hospital have room for improvement? Results will enable hospitals to sort benchmark metrics by hospital ED volume, trauma designation, teaching status and community location.
Key metrics include:
- Length of Stay for admitted patients
- Length of Stay for fast track/urgent care patients
- Length of Stay for ED discharge patients (non-fast track/urgent care)
- Door-to-Doctor Time
- ED Boarding Time
- Percent Left Without Being Seen
