SUPPORTIVE EVIDENCE EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT

Supportive Evidence Emergency Department

Crowding on Clinically



Supportive Evidence Emergency Department

Crowding on Clinically

Introduction

The phenomenon of overcrowding in emergency departments of clinics and hospitals has shown a rapid increase in recent years the two articles that support the fact are Emergency department overcrowding in the United States: an emerging threat to patient safety and public health by Trzeciak S, Rivers EP 2003 and The Effect of Emergency Department Crowding on Clinically Oriented Outcomes Progressive Clinical Practice Steven L. Bernstein 2008.

The Evidence

More and more people are turning to emergency departments for care, especially those with health insurance. The things driving that are complicated: It's harder for people to see their own doctor now. (Bernstein 2008)

It may take months to see a specialist. Alternatively, when they call their doctor, patients are told even during the day to go the ED. A study of ED patients at one hospital found that of those who had talked to a physician beforehand almost 80 percent were told to go to the ED. Another issue involves the shrinkage of hospitals and hospital capacity over the last 20 years. Many hospitals closed or downsized because of managed care and we saw huge cuts in hospital beds. But ED use has surged. So increasingly, you have patients sitting in EDs because they can't get to a patient floor because of a lack of ICU and other hospital. Patients are stranded in the emergency department. It's become the safety net for the safety net. We neglected the ED. We didn't spend enough time thinking about how to make it better. Now, that neglect is coming home to roost. The disputes faced in following the care procedure while meeting tactical business goals within the healthcare delivery system and accepting twenty first century digital business practices are overwhelming. Providing care in today's multifaceted, incorporated, healthcare delivery networks presents challenges formerly unseen in this industry. In particular, healthcare executives and clinical professionals are challenged to delineate and employ information systems that sustain an efficient and successful care process, while meeting the business needs of the healthcare delivery structure. Accomplishing digital transformation and executing a Virtual Patient Record in today's intricate delivery networks presents a complication previously unobserved in the industry. The days of documenting in a paper layout are deemed obsolete in an industry that has provided way to exceedingly complex and sophisticated clinical functionality that is maintained by refined technologies, complex infrastructures, and constantly mounting demands for assimilation and diffusion of data for real-time analysis and proactive outcome management of the patient. Conventional paradigms and methods of paper documentation are miserably inadequate, inefficient, and futile in meeting today's incorporated healthcare business needs

The reality today is that people are going to the ED. It has become a critical access point. For many people, it has become their family doctor. So we can either make the ED a better place so it can serve that purpose, or let it stay crowded and congested with patients needing ...