System-wide flow initiative slashes patient wait times in the ED, boosts volume by 25%.
Emergency department administrators at Cambridge Health Alliance, a three-hospital health care organization in Cambridge, MA, implemented a system-wide flow initiative that has reduced the average length-of-stay for rapid assessment patients from three hours to just over an hour. Under the approach, patients are immediately placed in a room, and providers and registration staff come to the patients rather than the traditional approach of having patients constantly move from place to place with wait times in between each interval of care. The approach relies on "patient partners," non-clinical personnel who are trained in customer service, to greet and quick-register patients who present to the ED for care. Administrators say 97% of patients who present to the ED are in a room within five minutes, and over 90% of them are seen by a provider within 14 minutes. The leave-without-being-seen (LWBS) rate has been slashed from 4.5% to 0.6%. System-wide ED volume, which was dropping before the new approach was implemented, has gone from 77,000 patients per year to nearly 100,000 patients per year.
D017598:Efficiency, Organizational; D004636:Emergency Service, Hospital / Q000458:organization & administration*; D008404:Massachusetts; D009096:Multi-Institutional Systems; D019982:Organizational Case Studies; D013997:Time Factors