4 ways to increase ER efficiency
Creating efficiences in the ER brings more revenue in and keeps costs down
It’s a sheer numbers game when looking at emergency room efficiency: the more patients that go through an ER, the more dollars a hospital takes in.
Catherine Polera, chief clinical officer of the emergency department division at Sheridan Healthcare, has spent the last three years trying to come up with a formula that helps increase emergency room throughput. “It requires a lot of good planning,” she said.
[See also: Emergency departments now account for half of all hospital inpatient admissions]
Here she shares four tips for increasing emergency room throughput.
1. Be organized. Being ahead of the curve when an emergency room fills up is like a grocery store ordering hundreds of extra turkeys before Thanksgiving. You can be caught in an embarrassing situation if you’ve not planned ahead. According to Polera, planning and organization should be across the board and even the smallest of details such as the location of the phone or the stocking of supplies can help get a patient to a doctor faster. “If you can get the patient to the doctor as soon as possible, you can increase throughput,” Polera said.
2. Bundle lab ordering. When a patient comes into an emergency room, several lab orders are placed with dozens of departments. Blood work, CT scans, x-rays, etc. can all take plenty of time when processed through all of the departments. Polera said hospitals should examine bundled orders to help cut down on wait times and get information in the hands of doctors.
3. Be well staffed, but not overstaffed. What seems to be the most obvious of all parts of the equation is the most difficult to plan for, said Polera. While it’s a guessing game for hospitals to try to keep an ER properly staffed, overstaffing can be quite costly to a hospital’s bottom line, said Polera. Managing staffing should be an ongoing process to keep waste to a minimum.
4. Implement lean processes. Hospitals have been using lean management in other departments as a way of better maintaining its bottom line. Sometimes, an emergency room is overlooked. But Polera said, that is a mistake. Polera relies on staff to look at every possible area that can save resources for things that can help get a patient through the emergency room faster, increasing throughput. “There is more and more pressure to get that formula right,” Polera said.
