A New Model in Reducing Emergency Department Crowding: The Electronic Blockage System.

Objectives: Emergency department (ED) crowding is a growing problem across the world. Hospitals need to identify the situation using emergency department crowding scoring systems and to produce appropriate solutions. Methods: A new program (Electronic Blockage System, EBS) was written supplementary to the Hospital Information System. It was planned that the number of empty beds in the hospital should primarily be used for patients awaiting admission to a hospital bed at the ED. In the presence of patients awaiting admission at the ED, non-urgent admissions to other departments were blocked. ED overcrowded was measured in the period before initiation of EBS, the early post-EBS period and the late post-EBS period, of one-week's duration each, using NEDOCS scoring. Results: NEDOCS values were significantly lower in the early post-EBS period compared to the other periods (p