Optimizing Emergency Department Front-End Operations - 20/08/11
, Christopher Gentle, MD b, James M. Halfpenny, DO c, Alan Heins, MD d, Abhi Mehrotra, MD e, Michael G. Mikhail, MD f, Diana Fite, MD g
Address for correspondence: Jennifer L. Wiler, MD, MBA, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Campus Box 8072, 660 S Euclid Avenue, St. Louis, MO 63110; 314-747-9949, 716-390-1288, or 314-256-9202, fax 314-362-0419Résumé |
As administrators evaluate potential approaches to improve cost, quality, and throughput efficiencies in the emergency department (ED), “front-end” operations become an important area of focus. Interventions such as immediate bedding, bedside registration, advanced triage (triage-based care) protocols, physician/practitioner at triage, dedicated “fast track” service line, tracking systems and whiteboards, wireless communication devices, kiosk self check-in, and personal health record technology (“smart cards”) have been offered as potential solutions to streamline the front-end processing of ED patients, which becomes crucial during periods of full capacity, crowding, and surges. Although each of these operational improvement strategies has been described in the lay literature, various reports exist in the academic literature about their effect on front-end operations. In this report, we present a review of the current body of academic literature, with the goal of identifying select high-impact front-end operational improvement solutions.
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| Supervising editor: Theodore R. Delbridge, MD, MPH |
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| Author contributions: JW conceived the project, designed the outline, supervised data collection, and was subcommittee chair. DF was EM Practice committee chair. AH, MM, JH, CG, AM and JW drafted the manuscript, and all authors contributed to its revision. JW takes responsibility for the paper as a whole. |
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| Funding and support: By Annals policy, all authors are required to disclose any and all commercial, financial, and other relationships in any way related to the subject of this article that might create any potential conflict of interest. The authors have stated that no such relationships exist. See the Manuscript Submission Agreement in this issue for examples of specific conflicts covered by this statement. |
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| Publication date: Available online June 25, 2009. |
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| Reprints not available from the authors. |
Vol 55 - N° 2
P. 142 - février 2010 Retour au numéro
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