Making Your Emergency Department Admissions Efficient & Predictable
In our first blog post we promised future entries, and we intend to follow through with this promise, beginning with this next post on Emergency Department admissions and patient placement.
Studies show that between 40 and 60 percent of hospital admissions come through the emergency department, with a similar percentage of hospital revenues being generated from those patients. Now, this is the Emergency Department we’re talking about, so it is easy to assume that these admissions are unscheduled and therefore unable to predict. In actuality, the level of ED admissions can be predicted, but many hospitals remain unequipped to process these admissions efficiently, resulting in interrupted patient flow right at the beginning.
We have compiled some issues that have been reported to us relating to ED admissions that cause frustration for both staff and patients.
- Although the ED has an electronic system to record the admission order, the admitting department only receives a text page, fax, paper printout, or phone call about the admission order. While the admitting staff knows where this patient should go it has limited information as to status and availability of beds resulting in multiple calls with one or more nursing units to update the bed information. That’s a three or four step process, between various departments, for the admission of a single patient.
- Infection control information sometimes comes late from a source other than ED, which often results in the need for a patient to be assigned to a different bed before even reaching the first assigned bed.
- Sometimes patients are admitted to a bed that is still occupied by a prior patient who has been discharged but is not out of the room yet, or to a bed that is empty but not yet cleaned. More calls need to be made to determine when the bed is ready and to order the transport for the patient.
These are challenges still being faced today in hospitals due to multiple manual and electronic processes, and multiple whiteboard and screen displays of, at times, inconsistent information. This scattering of information causes hospital admissions departments to question which information is real and which has yet to be updated.
So, in an age where technology is the sole marker of progress, why is it that hospitals are still floundering in paper-based forms and un-integrated systems? Rather than debate an answer to that question, we are now going to discuss the solution: Patient placement software is available that can be integrated with emergency department information systems, patient registration systems, and admission, discharge and transfer systems to receive and display relevant information about pending admission patients, including their demographic and clinical information. This technology can track and display the bed statuses and availability of beds in selected nursing units or the whole hospital, and it can facilitate the selection and reservation of appropriate beds. Patient placement software can also be integrated with transport systems in order to dispatch a transporter when the selected bed becomes available.
Beyond relieving hospital admissions staff of a headache, patient placement software means better care, patient and staff satisfaction, higher bed utilization and increased revenue generation. Patient placement technology is the next, necessary step in hospital care because it integrates the different systems and departments that allow for patients to be admitted, treated and discharged with ease and efficiency.
