Crowding from boarding can harm patients
Crowding from boarding can harm patients
There is a significant amount of research that demonstrates ED crowding due to boarding is responsible for poor outcomes, says Tom Scaletta, MD, president of Emergency Excellence, a Chicago-based organization that improves patient care and efficiency in the ED while controlling costs. He also is medical director of a high-volume community hospital in a Chicago suburb.
Most lawsuits will involve delayed diagnoses in time-sensitive problems such as myocardial infarction, ischemic stroke, peripheral vascular disease/ischemia, intracranial bleeding, and hemorrhagic shock, Scaletta says.
In the event of a lawsuit, Scaletta recommends showing the jury a log of patients seen that day, with names redacted, and the number of ED physicians and midlevel providers that were working. "There are published statements published by professional societies that dictate reasonable staffing levels," he says. For instance, of the American Academy of Emergency Medicine says the rate of patient influx should not exceed 2.5 patients per physician per hour on average. (Editor's note: To access this position statement, go to www.aaem.org. Click on "AAEM Position Statements," and scroll down to "Position Statement on Physician-to-Patient ED Staffing Ratios" and "Position Statement on Nurse-to-Patient ED Staffing Ratios.")
Scaletta believes this is safely increased by 50% (to 3.75) when a physician works as a team with a midlevel provider. "Emergency physicians need to have due process so that they can speak up about problems like understaffing and not get fired, which has happened," he adds. Your documentation needs to be "factual and not accusatory," says Scaletta. "I also think emergency physicians need to be aware of the waiting room load and call in reinforcements when the number/acuity is high," he says. "Hospitals need to have a crowding action plan, akin to internal disaster activation."
For legal damages to result, a patient's long wait in an ED hallway has to be tied to some consequence, notes Peter Viccellio, MD, FACEP, vice chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine at State University of New York at Stony Brook.
But what about the possibility of a jury being inflamed to hear that a patient was waiting for 20 hours in the hallway of an ED? "It should anger them, but the anger is misdirected. It's not the physician taking care of the patient, it's the fault of the system," he says. "But part of the problem is throwing our hands in the air and saying, 'We can't do any better,' which is not true. We really cannot accept this terrible care that is provided as part of the status quo."
If the ED is "filled to the gills" with patients, and you now have 20 additional patients to distribute, the logical answer is to put two of those patients on each unit. "But what's the current answer in many hospitals? To put all 20 in one place," says Viccellio.
He points to his own institution's practice, which sends the admitted patients to board on floor hallways when the ED is at full capacity. "It has dramatically enhanced the care of our patients. This is far more important than the consequence of that: decreasing our liability," says Viccellio. "And in terms of putting patients on the floors, we have done an exhaustive search for patient safety issues, and we can't find any."
What most institutions are asking their EDs to do is care for all the patients who come in, and staffing for those patients, but in effect, saying, "By the way, you may have an extra 30 admitted patients that you have to care for,'" says Viccellio. "What we are asking of the inpatient units is that, during times of high capacity, a nursing unit that takes care of 30 patients will care for 31 or 32," he says. "Patients are much more comfortable upstairs than downstairs. And they don't stay in the hallway for long, because magically a bed opens up once they're up there."
Anyone on a jury has likely gone to an ED and waited for hours to be seen, notes Viccellio. "And to most of them, it's not apparent why," he says. "I think there is a very legitimate moral and legal question we need to ask: Does the fact that 'that's the way things are,' make them OK? I don't think you can fault somebody if it costs $100 million to do something. But if you can just change the way people work, at little to no cost, and it has a profound impact on the patient, why not do it?"
There is a significant amount of research that demonstrates ED crowding due to boarding is responsible for poor outcomes, says Tom Scaletta, MD, president of Emergency Excellence, a Chicago-based organization that improves patient care and efficiency in the ED while controlling costs. He also is medical director of a high-volume community hospital in a Chicago suburb.Subscribe Now for Access
You have reached your article limit for the month. We hope you found our articles both enjoyable and insightful. For information on new subscriptions, product trials, alternative billing arrangements or group and site discounts please call 800-688-2421. We look forward to having you as a long-term member of the Relias Media community.