Patient flow

The three articles below provide interesting real world illustrations of the ways health care professionals seek to maximise efficiency and reduce costs through improvements in emergency department practices, particularly in terms of patient flow.

Understanding challenges in the ED is key

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, is a global front-runner in improving patient flow. Key solutions are patient data tracking, evidence-based protocols, medical informatics and cross-departmental collaboration. Taking its own medicine, the hospital has improved the rate of heart attack patients that meet the national treatment target from 53% to 86%.

Patient flow should be built around patient need

Overcrowded emergency departments cause patients’ dissatisfaction, stress among hospital staff and a rising cost burden for society. At Herlev Hospital in Denmark, the emergency department sees a number of solutions to improving patient flow: redesigning patient flow paths and improving doctors’ confidence in test results.

Emergency Medicine in The Netherlands

Amongst the best medical care providers in the world, it might come as a surprise to learn emergency medicine in The Netherlands is still very much in evolution. In fact, as a medical speciality, emergency medicine does not exist. But what might strike some as an unusual situation, in no way exempts Dutch emergency staff from facing many of the usual challenges faced by emergency departments.