Why Can’t We Be More Like Other Countries?
Oops. I guess we aren’t so different:
The practice of keeping admitted patients on stretchers in hospital emergency department hallways for hours or days, called “boarding,” causes emergency department crowding and can be harmful to patients. Boarding increases patients’ morbidity, lengths of hospital stay, and mortality. Strategies that optimize bed management reduce boarding by improving the efficiency of hospital patient flow, but these strategies are grossly underused.
I can see how warehousing patients on stretchers in hallways could lead to higher mortality. For one thing, it could be considered a proxy for desperate patients who cannot go elsewhere. It could also be considered a proxy for a hospital that lacks the resources to care for all that seek care. These are all factors that could affect mortality.
Hospital boarding can also be reduced by set registration programs to place patients on fast track services with the needs of their conditions. For example, infants with high fevers can be placed in waiting areas designed to start the process of simple health care checks. Such as weight, blood pressure, and nervous parents filling in the nurse on what is going on.
The article suggested that hospitals might need to legislate their way to efficiency..
This is certainly one of the more terrible practices going on in hospitals.