title: ED revamp: team approach to care reduces errors, boosts patient and clinician satisfaction.
abstract: With a poor safety record and long waits for care, the ED at St. Vincent's Medical Center in Bridgeport, CT, launched a comprehensive improvement effort that has slashed door-to-doctor times, drastically improved patient satisfaction, and reduced serious safety events to zero during the past year. Key to the approach is a team-based operations system that makes care teams responsible for specific zones in the ED. Patient satisfaction has gone from the single digits to above 90% in almost all areas, but high satisfaction is now harder to sustain because of elevated patient expectations. Door-to-doctor times have been reduced from 126 minutes to less than 25 minutes. Team approach to care improves clinician satisfaction while reducing errors. A streamlined triage system has eliminated several steps for low-acuity patients.
mesh_terms: D003237:Connecticut; D017598:Efficiency, Organizational; D004636:Emergency Service, Hospital / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006739:Hospital Administration; D006801:Humans; D007318:Inservice Training; D019300:Medical Errors / Q000517:prevention & control*; D019982:Organizational Case Studies; D009937:Organizational Objectives; D010348:Patient Care Team; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D014218:Triage / Q000458:organization & administration; D014850:Waiting Lists