Nine emergency department health providers have created a consensus statement that lays out metrics to help reduce ED crowding.
“Emergency department crowding is a serious healthcare problem that is only getting worse,” said Emergency Nurses Association president AnnMarie Papa, RN, in a statement. “Addressing it is one of ENA’s top clinical priorities, but we can’t solve a problem if we can’t agree on how to quantify it. This consensus statement is a first and important step in reducing crowding and boarding in emergency rooms and helping us provide better and faster care to our patients.”
Led by the ENA, organizations such as the American Academy of Emergency Medicine, the American College of Emergency Physicians, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Emergency Department Practice Management Association have agreed on standardized ED metrics that will create benchmarks to be used to form strategies reducing ED crowding and boarding.
The consensus statement defines
• what an ED is
• ED arrival time
• ED offload time
• ED transfer of care from pre-hospital providers time
• ED triage time
• ED treatment space time
“By working together, the EMS, nursing and physician communities have achieved an important consensus on these metrics,” added Papa. “Now we can begin the process of quantifying the issues we face in emergency medicine so that we can find the solutions we all know are needed.”