Background: Rhode Island was hard hit by the COVID pandemic due to a particularly toxic combination of demographic factors. It is a densely populated state, with a large immigrant population. The populace is older, poorer, and less educated than the rest of New England. At Kent Hospital, in Warwick, Rhode Island, the first case in [...]

Background: Hospital throughput and length of stay (LOS) are important drivers of success in an increasingly competitive healthcare landscape where revenues are down and demand can exceed hospital capacity. More specifically, longer LOS and hospital throughput bottlenecks impact access to timely care, the quality and safety of care delivery, patient and family satisfaction, and provider [...]

Background: Emergency room overcrowding is a national crisis largely attributed to high volumes of admitted patients awaiting beds in the Emergency Department (1). Studies have shown that ED overcrowding delays care for all patients, increases length of stay, and reduces overall quality of care (2). Contributing to this are potentially unnecessary floor admissions. With the [...]

Background: Targeted approaches for early discharge times have been utilized to improve patient flow, but literature shows sparse evidence for hospital-wide efforts and mixed benefits for the length of stay and readmission rates. Furthermore, there is limited data for this approach across a large academic medical center. We set an aim to increase the percentage [...]