Background: Late afternoon hospital discharges contribute to admission delays, leading to occupancy increase and increased length of stay. However, prominent workplace barriers often exist towards improvement initiatives that target early discharge. Team members cite timing of rounds, absence of early discharge support resources, communication breakdowns, and increased daytime admission volume as barriers to change. Furthermore, […]

Case Presentation: A previously healthy 41‐year‐old man presented to the emergency department (ED) with right‐sided pleuritic chest pain of 1‐week duration. He was diagnosed with right lower lobe pulmonary embolism (PE) on CTA of the chest, attributed to recent prolonged travel history, and the patient was subsequently discharged home on warfarin. After 2 weeks, patient […]

Case Presentation: A 24‐year‐old white man presented to our hospital with ulcerative skin lesions and scleritis. He had a history of relapsing polychondritis (RP) that was diagnosed 3 years back and was well controlled for last 1 year with azathioprine 175 mg daily and prednisone 2.5 mg daily. A month prior to his current admission […]

Background: Our 165-bed community hospital is in a phase of rapid growth due to demographic changes and expansion of services offered within the hospital. While offering unprecedented level of healthcare access to the community, improvement with emergency department (ED) throughput has emerged as one of our challenges from a patient safety perspective. Unnecessarily prolonged ED […]