An Annals of Emergency Medicine study has identified key strategies for addressing the problem of overcrowded hospital emergency rooms. They were, as summarized by FierceHealthcare:
- “Executive buy-in: Leaders in the highest-performing hospitals had identified overcrowding as a key problem for them to solve, setting goals and providing the resources to accomplish them.
- “Responses coordinated across the hospital: Hospitals in the low-performance group often operated in silos, while the highest-performing deployed strategies that required coordination between departments.
- “Use of data: High-performing hospitals gathered and leveraged data to adjust ER operations in real time and to provide feedback to key staff members. Predictive analytics allowed ER staff to map needs and estimate patient flow.
- “Accountability: The highest-performing hospitals addressed issues immediately and held staff members accountable.”
To read the study, please hit this link.
To read the FierceHealthcare summary, please hit this link.