Establishing a More Efficient Emergency Department Throughput: One Hospital's Experience

Thesis (M.Nurs.), College of Nursing, Washington State UniversityOvercrowding in the emergency department has become a national crisis. Facilities have been challenged to devise new strategies to deal with the influx of patients who are seeking medical treatment in the emergency department. The purpose of this paper is to present how one hospital formed a process improvement team to restructure patient flow and change the culture of the emergency department in order to improve patient throughput. Kadlec Regional Medical Center, a 270-bed, level 3 trauma center located in Richland, Washington was experiencing an average growth in volume of over 9% per year between 2003 and 2009. The number of patients who left without being seen by a provider and the wait times to see a provider increased along with the overall length of stay. A change in the way patients were managed from triage and registration, along with a new method to assigning patients into treatment rooms not only improved the efficiency of the department, but also improved patient and staff satisfaction