Background: Hospitals increasingly face capacity strain and challenges with patient flow, leading to emergency department (ED) crowding, ED boarding, and threats to patient safety and quality of care. ED boarding occurs from the time of the decision to admit until the patient arrives in an inpatient bed and is affected by many factors including discharge [...]

Background: Efficient discharge planning for hospital medicine patients requires alignment across multiple disciplines. Understanding how clinicians communicate information about discharge readiness can identify opportunities to improve discharge coordination and impact length of stay, hospital capacity, and patient satisfaction. The objective of this study was to outline the existing information gathering and communication pathways around discharge [...]

Background: With COVID surge and staffing shortages, there is a significant strain on hospital systems. Emphasis is on throughput, an effective frontline team, and improved patient and provider communication. Interprofessional rounds are a cornerstone of aligning the care teams and formulating a safe discharge plan. Purpose: To achieve timely and effective inter-professional communication and close [...]

Background: Boarding of admitted patients in the Emergency Department has become an increasingly large problem throughout the country. Longer boarding times are associated with a wide range of adverse effects, ranging from patient discomfort to medical errors and death. Emergency Departments are not designed to provide inpatient care and require frequent diversion of attention and [...]

Background: Delivering high quality and efficient care is a top priority at our 800-bed quaternary care hospital. We have seen significant improvements in many patient-care domains by implementing hospital-wide standardized interdisciplinary rounds. As part of our ongoing efforts to further improve efficiency and value, we hope to leverage a simple order in our electronic medical [...]

Background: To date, there are limited reports around the use of well-designed information technology tools to enhance communication during interdisciplinary rounds (IDRs). Computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) is a field that studies the integration of information technology into the workflow of healthcare teams. In collaboration with our technology innovations center, we developed a Microsoft Teams [...]

Background: Ongoing staffing shortages, high bed occupancy rates and post COVID changes are putting substantial strain not only on the inpatient environment, but also on the Emergency Department (ED). Increase in the number of boarded patients and length of boarding times pose risk to optimal patient care. Across the nation, the role of hospitalist as [...]

Background: Hospitals are facing increasing pressure to optimize throughput in order to reduce excess length of stay and improve emergency department (ED) boarding times. Improving coordination and throughput in complex organizations with multiple care sites can be particularly challenging. Health systems have implemented numerous initiatives to improve hospital throughput, but these efforts have mainly been [...]