The time where your patients have to wait for long periods of time cramped up in impersonal emergency room may be coming to an end. Since the Affordable Care Act released their requirements, a flood of new healthcare provider competition has come along making the increasing demands of a disconcerting patient community so high that hospital systems have to reformulate the ED rooms into more efficient and welcoming environments. Some factors that affect emergency physician scheduling are as follows.
1) Freestanding Emergency Departments
Emergency care is going beyond the boundaries of hospitals and moving into existing and future patient populace communities. Free standing emergency departments provide the same traditional ED medical resources. They often gather in medical buildings that allow for ancillary services like walk-in imaging capabilities, physician offices and ambulatory surgery centers. Additional emergency medicine scheduling will be needed to accommodate this change.
2) Integrating Technology
With the increase in portable medical technology, it is now more quickly available for bedsides for supporting inventions that need to be completed as fast as possible for positive outcomes. The end result of many time-sensitive health disorders like trauma, stroke, and heart attacks rely immensely on speedy treatment. As modern technology continues to get more portable and smaller, ED staff will be able to get rid of some space and use it where they need it, moving it from room to room and bedside.
3) Extreme Emphasis on Quality Patient Care
Hospitals and emergency departments deem their patient care as top priority and always have. However, the stakes have been raised through the Affordable Care Act through 'pay for performance' provisions where providers of healthcare are rewarded for providing high levels of quality care and penalized when they fall short. In order to provide this quality care, their shift scheduling also has to meet the needs for flexible staff scheduling or adding on more staff when needed. Also, ED facilities boost their quality care by providing more organized physician scheduling. But now, Medicare pays emergency departments and hospitals based on their performance under a set of clinical quality quota like readmission rates. In fact, Medicare has already penalized hospitals that have higher readmissions than expected.
Wait times need to decrease and outcomes need to be improved in order for hospitals and emergency departments to be reimbursed for their quality of care, instead of volume. Today, EDs are focusing more on quality of care and how they can deliver healthcare in the most efficient manner.
4) Using Lean Concepts for Operational Efficiency
The productivity of ED operations need to increase in order for hospitals to get more patients through their system as efficiently and effectively as possible. Some hospitals are using lean principles and methodologies to maximize their efficiency. This is a tool that enables emergency departments to improve their work quality, decrease lengths of stay, and improve staff and patient satisfaction and lower costs.
5) Flexible Physician Scheduling for Peak Patient Volumes
In order to accommodate an influx of patient volume, EDs have to grow and quickly contract staff. They need to be flexible and equipped during unexpected high patient loads such as a big highway accident, for instance. They need to be able to accommodate their patients quickly and effectively and deal with a huge range of medical issues that patients present. Not only has this led to flexible emergency medicine scheduling, but also the rise of acuity-adaptable, universal, same-handed treatment rooms.
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