Written by New York Methodist Hospital, Brooklyn, N.Y.
State-of-the-art bed tracking leads to shorter ED waits and faster turn-arounds.
At New York Methodist Hospital (NYM), an uncoordinated system for bed turnover at patient discharge caused overcrowding in the emergency department (ED) and became a serious issue. As many as 25 patients might be kept waiting in the ED during high-volume periods, which created numerous challenges for the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based hospital. The ED received 65,295 patients in 2007; however, the ED was at risk of losing revenue from turning patients away because it was at operating capacity. Hospital administrators often overstaffed their environmental and patient-transport teams because they couldn’t accurately predict their needs. And, due to the overcrowded conditions and long waits, patient satisfaction also suffered.
Written by Elizabeth A. Arsenault, RN, Alan E. Cudney, RN, and Jacalyn S. Luchsinger, RN
Leveraging CPOE technology can improve caregiver communications and increase patient safety.
It’s hard to pick up a newspaper without reading about medication errors — they happen every day. In its well-publicized 2006 report "Preventing Medication Errors," the Institute of Medicine (IOM) estimated that 1.5 million Americans are harmed every year by medication errors, with the true number being even higher. Further, the committee noted the staggering financial costs associated with these errors, "Assuming 400,000 of these events [medication errors] each year — a conservative estimate — the total annual cost would be $3.5 billion …."