Here is how three Louisiana hospitals are working to improve their ER wait times, pulled from The Advocate.
Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge, La., is working with GE to cut their ER wait times. The hospital offers bedside registration, allowing patients to sign in at the front desk, afterwards they are immediately directed to a triage nurse and shown an ER bed. Patients can also check in online if requiring care for a minor emergency. The hospital makes a sustained effort to keep wait times for both primary and emergency care no longer than 10 to 15 minutes.
Baton Rouge General has employed Lafayette-based Schumacher Clinical Partners, a company that works with 200 hospitals in 28 states, to help improve patient flow in the ER. The hospital also recently added an Advanced Assessment Center to their Bluebonnet campus. The center redirects a number of patients, mostly those with chest pain or heart attack symptoms, to specialized areas. This allows patients to be monitored, examined and treated for several hours, avoiding a costly hospital admission and freeing up an ER bed for a patient with more immediate needs.
Ochsner Health in New Orleans is also utilizing the services of Schumacher Clinical Partners. At Ochsner Health, triage nurses evaluate patients to speed the flow of the ER. Also, the facility is equipped with a designated area outside the ER for patients with less urgent needs. By implementing these practices, Ochsner has reduced its walkaways to less than 1 percent. The national average is 3 percent.
In The Advocate, James Augustine, MD, a spokesperson for the American College of Emergency Physicians, asserted that while hospital emergency departments have gotten quicker at getting patients to physicians, there is probably a limit to how much wait times can be reduced.
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