ER Crowd Tips

Physicians offer several tips meant to help patients better navigate EDs.
In a series dedicated to empowering patients, CNN (1/14, Rice) recounts the case of an infant whose worsening prognosis was attributed to -- by her parents -- the fact that she spent "nearly five hours...waiting in the emergency department." The case is surely not unique, considering that, "according to a 2009 report from the Government Accountability Office, emergency department wait times continue to increase." Comparing an ED to a restaurant in which some patrons stay longer than expected, ACEP President Dr. Sandra Schneider "says the backups occur as emergency departments struggle to find beds for admitted patients." With that in mind, ED physicians offered several tips to help patients "both before and after" they're arrival.
EDs trying new approaches to ease crowding. Kaiser Health News (1/14, Kenen) reports that Ochsner Medical Center "is one of a growing number of emergency departments trying new approaches to ease crowding. Those efforts "have ranged from high-tech options such as smart phone programs that let patients compare waiting times at local hospitals to something as mundane as staggering nursing shifts to better match patient traffic." But a number of hospitals like Ochsner "are looking at more fundamental routines, shaking up and re-engineering their procedures." For example, the center "created an emergency department protocol called 'QTrack'" in which the "sickest patients still go back immediately to the emergency department's traditional beds, but [some] patients...go quickly into separate treatment areas with a nice comfortable recliner or to a procedure room for stitches or a cast."
Emergency departments experience increase in patients, obstacles during snowstorms. CNN (1/13, Park) reported, "During snowstorms, people with chronic health issues such as end-stage renal disease have nowhere else to go for help, because their dialysis centers are closed." What's more, "'if you can't get to the pharmacy and it's a critical life-sustaining medication, the emergency department is your only bet,' said Dr. Leigh Vinocur, a spokeswoman for the American College of Emergency Physicians." Indeed, the "wait...may not be longer than usual, because people with less pressing health needs opt to stay home," but EDs "can face issues of crowding as discharged patients can't leave because they have no safe way of getting home" and "the homeless who are unable to find shelter come to hospitals with cold-related issues such as hypothermia." But "for emergency responders, the biggest obstacle is navigating through the maze of ice slicks and car accidents."