A hospital medicine team in the emergency department improves throughput and lowers costs.
Boarding of admitted patients in the emergency department (ED) is linked to lower-quality outcomes and less patient and provider satisfaction. Furthermore, boarding lowers an ED's capacity to evaluate and manage new patients, which can lead to ambulance diversion — a costly and burdensome event for both patients and healthcare facilities. In 2008, researchers introduced the concept of active bed management by hospitalists in the ED (JW Hosp Med Jan 12 2009).
In 2009, a large urban teaching hospital introduced a hospitalist-led, hospital medicine–emergency department team to provide ongoing care to medical patients who were awaiting inpatient beds and to assist nursing supervisors with active bed management. Compared with diversions during a …