Improving Patient Flow in Emergency Departments Research Paper

Improving Patient Flow in Emergency Departments - Research Paper Example He added that the increased number of admissions and unscheduled patients has significant impacts on the entire emergency care delivery system. In the throughput phase, there were delays in the operating suites because it is mainly done in specific days of a week. He said that surgical operations are done on Mondays and Tuesdays rather than spreading out the operations throughout the week. It, therefore, means that surgeons and other clinical officers are very busy in some days and free in others. The administrator of Provicence Hospital added that the various problems faced experienced in the output phase include prolonged time of discharge or referral and incomplete treatments. He noted that the incomplete treatments is a common problem in ED because it leads to delayed discharges and referrals and can last for many weeks when patients are instructed to visit the ED again in specific dates (Hall, 2013). Bottlenecks and the metrics used to identify them as well as the challenges of the patient were also identified during the interview. Note that the term ‘bottlenecks’ is the part of the emergency care delivery systems that is obstructed to cause delays and waits. Metrics and the methods used to measure the efficiency of the system (Hall, 2013). Based on Mr. Johnson’s response, the bottlenecks in the emergency care delivery system can be divided into three groups. In the group for inputs, the major bottleneck is the delayed admission and registration of patients due to the fact that clinical care responsibilities are not separated from the paper and information flow. The metrics used to identify this issue involved the measurement of the time taken for patients to be registered. Do they wait for long on the benches? Based on his response, most of the patients admitted to the ED wait for around 40-45minutes before they are treated. In the group addressing the throughput, the main bottleneck identified is the creation of idle time