Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
-
Comparative Study
The association of emergency department crowding and time to antibiotics in febrile neonates.
The objective was to assess the relationship between emergency department (ED) crowding and timeliness of antibiotic administration to neonates presenting with fever in a pediatric ED. ⋯ Emergency department crowding is associated with delays in antibiotic administration to the febrile neonate despite rapid recognition of this patient population as a high-risk group. Each component of ED crowding, in terms of input, throughput, and output factors, was associated with delays. Further work is required to develop processes that foster a more rapid treatment protocol for these high-risk patients, regardless of ED crowding pressures.
-
Emergency department (ED) boarding has been associated with several negative patient-oriented outcomes, from worse satisfaction to higher inpatient mortality rates. The current study evaluates the association between length of ED boarding and outcomes. The authors expected that prolonged ED boarding of admitted patients would be associated with higher mortality rates and longer hospital lengths of stay (LOS). ⋯ Hospital mortality and hospital LOS are associated with length of ED boarding.
-
Emergency department (ED) crowding is a major public health problem in the United States, with increasing numbers of ED visits, longer lengths of stay in the ED, and the common practice of ED boarding. In the next several years, several measures of ED crowding will be assessed and reported on government websites. In addition, with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), millions more Americans will have health care insurance, many of whom will choose the ED for their care. ⋯ This was achieved through three objectives: 1) a review of interventions that have been implemented to reduce crowding and summarize the evidence of their effectiveness on the delivery of emergency care; 2) to identify strategies within or outside of the health care setting (i.e., policy, engineering, operations management, system design) that may help reduce crowding or improve the quality of emergency care provided during episodes of ED crowding; and 3) to identify the most appropriate design and analytic techniques for rigorously evaluating ED interventions designed to reduce crowding or improve the quality of emergency care provided during episodes of ED crowding. This article describes the background and rationale for the conference and highlights some of the discussions that occurred on the day of the conference. A series of manuscripts on the details of the conference is presented in this issue of Academic Emergency Medicine.
-
Ontario is Canada's most populous province, with approximately 12 million people and 130 emergency departments (EDs). Canada has a national single-payer universal health care system, but provinces are responsible for administration. After years of problems and failed attempts to address chronic ED overcrowding, in April 2008 Ontario embarked on an ambitious program to improve system performance through targeted investments (initially CAN$500 million over 3 years) and realigned incentives. ⋯ The greatest improvements were made among the cohort of mainly urban, high-volume EDs that had the worst performance at baseline. This presentation will highlight some of the controversies and challenges and key lessons learned. Overall, the Ontario experience suggests ED overcrowding is a soluble problem, but requires a system-level intervention.
-
During the 1990s, relentlessly increasing emergency department (ED) attendances in the United Kingdom led to major dysfunction and ED overcrowding. The situation was exacerbated by outdated ED design, inadequate ED capacity, traditional ED processes, a predominantly junior doctor-based workforce, and insufficient in-hospital beds for patients requiring admission. The crisis led to high-profile lobbying by the U. ⋯ The intention is for these indicators to act as levers for change and to generate a program of continuing improvement in emergency care. The indicators were introduced in England in April 2011, and currently there is a period of bedding-in and collective learning. The quality indicators will be reviewed and refined as required, with any amendments introduced in April 2012.