Hospitalists and an Innovative Emergency Department Admission Process

After treatment in an emergency department (ED), patients often wait several hours for hospital admission, resulting in dissatisfaction and increased wait times for both admitted and other ED patients. We implemented a new direct admission system based on telephone consultation between ED physicians...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of general internal medicine : JGIM 2004-03, Vol.19 (3), p.266-268
Main Authors: Howell, Eric E., Bessman, Edward S., Rubin, Haya R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Baltimore
Biological and medical sciences
Cohort Studies
emergency medicine
Emergency Service, Hospital - organization & administration
hospitalist
Hospitalists
Hospitals
Humans
Innovations in Education and Clinical Practice
Internal medicine
Length of Stay - statistics & numerical data
Medical sciences
Miscellaneous
Mortality
Outcome Assessment (Health Care) - statistics & numerical data
patient admission
Patient Admission - statistics & numerical data
Patient Transfer
Public health. Hygiene
Public health. Hygiene-occupational medicine
Time Factors
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:After treatment in an emergency department (ED), patients often wait several hours for hospital admission, resulting in dissatisfaction and increased wait times for both admitted and other ED patients. We implemented a new direct admission system based on telephone consultation between ED physicians and in‐house hospitalists. We studied this system, measuring admission times, length of stay, and mortality. Postintervention, admission times averaged 18 minutes for transfer to the ward compared to 2.5 hours preintervention, while pre‐ and postintervention length of stay and mortality rates remained similar.
ISSN:0884-8734
1525-1497
DOI:10.1111/j.1525-1497.2004.30431.x