Consequences for overcrowding in the emergency room of a change in bed management policy on available in-hospital beds.

Conclusions Changing policies for hospital bed management is worth exploring to improve hospital patient flow and length of stay.What is known about the topic? The lack of available hospital beds is a major difficulty in managing patient flow in emergency rooms (ERs). The ER patient flow competes against a flow of planned hospital admissions for the same beds and the lack of a clearly defined policy on either prioritising ER patient flow over planned admissions or vice versa contributes to a disordered system.What does this paper add? We compared several simulated scenarios corresponding to different bed management policies. The scenario that gave priority to planned admissions and surgery gave the most suitable results.What are the implications for practitioners? Postponing scheduled surgical patients was not an efficient procedure to solve hospital overcrowding.
PMID: 26476497 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

Source: Australian Health Review - October 19, 2015 Category: Hospital Management Authors: Claret PG, Boudemaghe T, Bobbia X, Stowell A, Miard É, Sebbane M, Landais P, De La Coussaye JE Tags: Aust Health Rev Source Type: research