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When patients visit emergency rooms or outpatient clinics in need of medical attention, effective patient flow facilitates the timely care of patients and avoids a bottleneck that can disrupt more than one department of the hospital.

Patient flow encompasses the systematic process of attending to patients, from the time they walk into a medical facility to the time they check out for discharge. It depends on both medical and administrative functions.

To improve patient flow in your facility, you need to evaluate the length of time it takes for a patient to check into a facility, have her paperwork processed, have her vitals taken, see the doctor and, if necessary, be assigned an inpatient bed.

To evaluate patient flow in your facility will require some work. You will need to collate some research, such as why people visit the ER, the availability of alternative sites of care, patient insurance status, physician referral practices, and other variables.

Next, analyze the actual day-to-day operations of the ER over a set period of time.

How are ER processes designed? Are medical specialists and ancillary services available in a timely fashion? Is clinical information readily accessible?

Finally, take a look at how long it takes to move an ER patient to his or her next disposition. Does the hospital have the systems and capacity to move ER patients to critical care and other inpatient units if necessary?

To gather key measurements, look at the length of each segment of the ER visit:

  • arrival to triage
  • triage to ER
  • ER to M.D care
  • M.D. to disposition
  • disposition to discharge

Pick a timeframe, perhaps two weeks, and collect statistics for

  • total volume of patients
  • average length of stay
  • total holding time
  • staff hour per patient
  • number of patients seen and patients per hour
  • bed placement statistics (e.g., how long from bed request to assignment)
  • radiology and laboratory statistics (e.g., orders, completions and results postings).

You may be surprised to discover which factors are dramatically impacting patients’ length of stay.

Studying patient flow helps hospitals and other healthcare facilities provide better service to patients. By understanding flow trends, administrators can streamline processes to minimize wait times and improve the patient’s experience at the facility.

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