Crowding: High-Impact Solutions

Many emergency departments in the United States are critically overcrowded, and this hampers the delivery of high-quality medical care. The primary cause of overcrowding is boarding—the practice of holding patients in the emergency department after they have been admitted to the hospital because no inpatient beds are available. This practice often results in patients ’ lying on gurneys in emergency department corridors for hours and even days, which affects not only their care and comfort but also the primary work of the emergency department staff—taking care of emergency department patients. In August 2007, the American College of Emergency Physicians established a task force to develop low-cost or no-cost solutions to boarding. The task force report, “Emergency Department Crowding: High-Impact Solutions, ” was published in April 2008 to help emergency physicians stop boarding in their own hospitals and ultimately improve patient care