Improving Patient Flow Critical to Meeting Increased Demand for Emergency Department Care Anticipated Under Affordable Care Act
The Joint Commission will present a webinar Friday, January 10 at 11 a.m. (ET), on new hospital patient flow standards which require addressing emergency department throughput problems from an enterprise-wide perspective.
Standard LD.04.03.11, “Patient Flow through the Emergency Department (ED),” directs hospital leadership to use data measurements to identify, mitigate and manage issues affecting ED overcrowding, patient boarding and other throughput issues which can lead to lapses in patient safety and quality of care.
The live, 60-minute webinar, “Managing the Flow of Patients through the Hospital,” will help attendees identify the root causes of patient flow problems and discuss risk reduction strategies related to patient flow in the hospital.
Presenters include Joint Commission executives Ann Scott Blouin, RN, PhD, FACHE, Executive Vice President of Customer Relations; Cynthia Leslie, APRN, MSN, BC, Associate Director, Standards Interpretation Group; and former Joint Commission executive Nanne M. Finis, RN, MS, Vice President of TeleTracking Consulting Services.
The webinar comes just as a new study, “Medicaid Increases Emergency-Department Use: Evidence from Oregon’s Health Insurance Experiment,” published in the journal Science, found that newly insured individuals who gained Medicaid coverage made 40 percent more visits to the emergency room than their uninsured counterparts during their first 18 months with insurance.
The study created a rare opportunity to study the effects of Medicaid coverage. Researchers found increases in emergency-department visits across a range of visit types, conditions and subgroups, including increases in visits for conditions that may be most readily treatable in primary care settings.
The increased demand anticipated from an estimated 30 million newly insured individuals under the Affordable Care Act, coupled with the aging Boomer population, will require hospitals to maximize their existing capacity and increase efficiency in order to treat more patients while meeting new standards of care. Effective patient flow management will play a crucial role in enabling hospitals to meet increased demand.
This webinar is a co-presentation with TeleTracking Technologies, Inc. To register, visit: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/443176366.
About TeleTracking:
For more than two decades, TeleTracking Technologies has applied proven principles of logistics management to hospitals and health systems to enhance patient care and improve financial performance. More information at http://www.teletracking.com.
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