• James D Melton, Fred Blind, A Brad Hall, Maureen Leckie, and April Novotny.
• Department of Emergency Medicine, Lakeland Regional Health, Lakeland, Florida. Electronic address: James.Melton@myLRH.org.
• Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf. 2016 Dec 1; 42 (12): 533-542.

BackgroundThis pre- and postintervention analysis evaluates the impact of a systemwide, comprehensive, executively supported quality improvement (QI) project on emergency department (ED) throughput measures and crowding in a large nonacademic community hospital.MethodsThe two primary endpoints used to assess the impact of the project were (1) the percentage of all patients who were door-in to door-out in less than three hours and (2) the percentage of patients who left without being seen (LWBS). Secondary endpoints for throughput were mean door-in to door-out, door-in to physician, physician to disposition, and disposition to door-out times for all patients. Secondary endpoints for crowding were median disposition to door-out time of admitted patients and the percentage of admitted patients with a disposition to door-out time of ≥ one, two, and six hours.ResultsA total of 666,640 patient visits were included in the primary endpoint analyses, with no patients excluded. The percentage of patients meeting the three-hour door-in to door-out goal after the QI project was 81.4%, versus 46.5% in the pre-QI group (difference, 34.9 percentage points; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 34.7-35.1; p < 0.0001). The postintervention LWBS rate was 0.49%, versus 4.00% in the pre-QI group (difference, 3.51 percentage points; 95% CI = 3.43-3.58; p < 0.0001). A total of 417,673 patient visits were screened for inclusion for the secondary endpoint analyses. The pre-QI and post-QI groups were also compared for secondary endpoints, and significant improvement was noted in all analyses.ConclusionThis study suggests that a comprehensive systemwide and executively supported QI project can make sustained multiyear improvements in ED throughput and LWBS. Further research is needed to determine if this standardized set of changes can be generalized to other hospital systems.Copyright 2016 The Joint Commission.

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