Hospitalist-led medicine emergency department team: Associations with throughput, timeliness of patient care, and satisfaction

BACKGROUND: Admitted patients boarding in the emergency department (ED) leads to hospital diversion. Active bed management and care for boarded patients can improve throughput. We developed a hospital medicine ED (HMED) team to participate in active bed management, and to care for boarded patients, to decrease diversion and improve throughput. METHODS: An HMED team was created to participate in active bed management and to care for boarded patients. The HMED team worked with the ED, nursing supervisors, and medical floors to manage inpatient beds. The primary outcome was percentage of hours of diversion attributed to lack of bed capacity. Secondary outcomes included the proportion of patients discharged within 8 hours of transfer to a medical floor, and the proportion of patients discharged from the ED. Promptness of clinical care was measured by rounding times. Satisfaction was obtained via survey. RESULTS: There was a relative reduction of diversion due to medicine bed capacity of 27% (4.5%3.3%; P < 0.01), a relative reduction in the percentage of patients transferred to a medicine floor and discharged within 8 hours of 67% (1.5%0.5%; P < 0.01), and a relative increase in the number of discharges from the ED of admitted medicine patients of 61% (4.9%7.9%; P < 0.001). Boarded admitted patients were rounded upon 2 hours earlier (P < 0.0001) by the HMED team. Satisfaction with the HMED team was high. CONCLUSION: An HMED team can improve patient flow and decrease ED diversion while providing more timely care to patients boarded in the ED. Journal of Hospital Medicine 2012; (C) 2012 Society of Hospital Medicine