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Emergency department overcrowding is approaching crisis levels in some hospitals and has the potential to cause decreased patient satisfaction (at best) and poor outcomes (at worst). These authors assessed whether hospital occupancy correlates with ED length of stay (LOS) for admitted patients in the ED.
Investigators reviewed administrative data for all patients who presented to a 500-bed Canadian teaching hospital between April 1993 and June 1999. The ED's mean daily volume (154 patients) and admission rate (18.6%) remained constant during the study period. The hospital's mean midnight occupancy rate was 89.7%. The ED LOS increased 5% (18 minutes) when the hospital occupancy rate increased by an absolute value of 10%. Most of the increase …