Reducing ED Boarders Need Not Reduce Hospital Revenue

The most commonly cited cause of emergency department (ED) boarding is lack of inpatient capacity. A frequently cited strategy to reduce boarding is to decrease non-ED admissions. However, as non-ED admissions are usually associated with higher revenue than ED admissions, the fiscal implications of this strategy are not typically embraced by hospital leadership.

Using financial and demographic data from one inner-city hospital, researchers developed models to calculate the potential financial effects of reducing ED boarding by implementing inpatient bed management policies that would decrease non-ED admissions and generate inpatient capacity. Two types of bed management policies were evaluated: static (absolute reduction of non-ED admissions…