Study Urges Hospitals To Consider Moving Some Patients to Hallways After Admission To Ease Emergency Department Overcrowding

U.S. hospital administrators should consider shifting patients in emergency departments who already have received care to hallways as a way to reduce ED overcrowding, according to a study to be presented on Tuesday at an American College of Emergency Physicians meeting in Chicago, the AP/Houston Chronicle reports.

The study -- led by Peter Viccellio, the clinical director of the ED at Stony Brook University Medical Center in New York -- found that the strategy posed no danger to patients and is a way to extend emergency patient care to the whole hospital, thus alleviating the responsibility on hospitals EDs. According to a 2007 ACEP survey of about 1,500 ED physicians, 13% said they personally had experienced patients dying because they were kept in the ED even after they had been admitted to the hospital, the AP/Chronicle reports.

The new study found that fewer deaths and admissions to the intensive care unit occurred among hallway patients, compared with standard bed patients. Viccellio said the finding was not surprising because the standard practice is to allocate the first available rooms to patients in need of emergency care, but intensive care patients are not moved to the hallways.

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Viccellio said, "This is yet another battle cry for hospitals to get off their duffs and stop stacking people knee-deep in the emergency department." Kirk Jensen of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement said the key reason to consider moving admitted ED patients to the hallways is that it involves all hospital staffers in the process of allocating the patients to rooms. Jensen said, "It's out of sight, out of mind, even if they know that patients are there in the emergency department," adding that when patients are moved to the hallways, hospital personnel "get a lot more creative and aggressive with workflow practices" (Johnson, AP/Houston Chronicle, 10/26).