Prolong Waiting Times in Emergency Department of Public Hospital and Increasing Patients Diversification with Care Delivery

Prolong Waiting Times in Emergency Department of Public Hospital and Increasing Patients Diversification with Care Delivery

Introduction

Emergency departments in hospitals are considered as one of the most important and basic safety nets for communities all over the world. Many countries around the globe including both developed and developing countries are reporting various problems in handling pressures of growing demand of the emergency departments as well as increase admission of patients with diverse health care needs. Many countries support that absence of adequate number of doctors, nurses, physicians and other healthcare professionals is one of the significant problem which translates into inadequate ratio of doctors and patients and causes prolonged waiting times in emergency departments in public hospitals. The increasing number of patient diversification in healthcare needs especially those who come under to the category of ageing population and chronic diseases as well as emergency road and fire accidents are further felt in growing demands for urgent care in public hospitals' emergency departments.

Overview

Emergency department which is main element of health delivery by hospitals has seen increasing problems of overcrowding not only in Australia but in countries all over the globe. This prolonged waiting creates more and more problems for patients as they are sometimes unable to being seen by a doctor and also deprived in providing adequate and timed health delivery to a hospital bed (Zun, 2009). The results of inadequate management of the emergency department do not only mean the inconvenience for the patients but it entails more than inconvenience including degradation and low satisfaction of patients from public hospitals who then have no choice but to turn towards private hospitals for proper treatment bearing high costs of medicines and treatment therein exists (Wiman & Wikblad, 2004). Various researchers believe that poor performance of emergency department and hospitals' mismanagement of increasing patient diversification for healthcare needs leads to low quality results of care provided, endangering patient's safety, impairing staff morale as well as increasing the cost of care by hospital management (Gordon, Sheppard & Anaf, 2010).

The research reveals that many hospitals have made untiring efforts to reduce emergency department prolonged waiting times as well as managing increasing patient diversification, these efforts did little in producing sustainable results mainly because of two strong reasons. The first reason that researchers believe is narrowness of most performance improvement programs in those public hospitals which aims solely on improving their emergency departments (Goransson & von Rosen, 2010). The researchers reveal that usually management of emergency department by hospitals is beyond their control just because there are many factors which exist and contribute towards emergency department overcrowding associated with other departments of public health hospitals. Many times hospitals suffer from mismanagement of prolonged waiting times and increasing patient diversification due to inability to manage cross-department and cross-role coordination among them required at all times. Hospitals as complex and busy entities than any other organizations usually have to deal with high ...