SRC Emergency Department honored for patient flow efforts

Yale New Haven Hospital’s Safe Patient Flow Committee recently presented its first Excellence In Safe Patient Flow award to the Saint Raphael Campus Emergency Department, for operational initiatives that profoundly improved throughput during a period of increasing patient volume.

With the advent of a successful nurse navigator position in the hospital’s Capacity Coordination Center, patient volume was shifted from the York Street Campus Emergency Department to the SRC. The result was an 8.4 percent increase in the SRC ED’s patient volume compared to two years before.

In response to the increase, and to best meet the needs of patients and the community, the SRC ED initiated “pull until full” and “bed ahead” processes. Both are designed to get patients into treatment spaces in the ED as soon as possible after arrival for triage and evaluation. The entire department adopted these initiatives and worked as a team to implement the changes.

As a result, the SRC ED has shortened patients’ time in the waiting room from 15 minutes a year ago to the current 10 minutes. The department has also significantly reduced the percentage of patients who leave without being seen by a provider, from 4.17 percent a year ago to 1.86 percent. All of this was achieved despite a rise in patient volume.