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Many emergency departments (EDs) are experimenting with new ways of improving throughput and patient satisfaction. Investigators retrospectively compared process measures at a single academic ED in Boston during the 12 months before and the 12 months after the ED started stationing a physician in the triage area to discharge simple cases and initiate complex evaluations. After this change, nurses still performed initial triage, and patients designated as medium acuity were then evaluated by the physician at triage. This analysis included 20,318 medium-acuity patients who were admitted to the hospital.
After the change, median times to the following process measures decreased: physician evaluation by 16 minutes, disposition decision by 6 minu…