UnityPoint Health Meriter Hospital in Madison, Wis., is testing out an "admissions unit" — a waiting area where emergency room patients needing admission are medically monitored until a bed is open, according to a July 11 report from ABC affiliate WKOW.
The admissions unit is designed to care for four to eight patients at a time, with the overall goal of connecting patients to care as quickly as possible. The hospital partnered with UW Health in Madison on the effort.
"This helps us keep our emergency room at capacity and seeing all the patients that need to be seen," Liz Nelson, MSN, BSN, director of patient care at the hospital, told the news outlet. "A lot of those patients are seen and go home. But the patients that do need to be admitted, it just gives us another avenue to kind of keep those admissions flowing through to their next stop in an efficient and safe manner."