At the Becker's Hospital Review 5th Annual Meeting in Chicago on May 16, Todd Lang, MD, medical director of emergency services for TeamHealth Midsouth, who practices at Baptist Hospital in Memphis, discussed using data to measure emergency department performance.
Hospitals can use data to help determine where tensions are taking place within their ED. There are always competing metrics in EDs, such as speed versus patient satisfaction, doctor time versus nursing time and door-to-physician versus length of stay, said Dr. Lang.
Dr. Lang specifically addressed the tension of door-to-physician versus length of stay. "Physicians and nurses can't do it all," so it's important for a hospital to decide what is most important, said Dr. Lang.
If a healthcare organization wants to decrease the amount of time it takes for an ED patient to see a physician, Dr. Lang suggests breaking down the data by how long it takes physicians to see a patient by day, specific physician, arrival nurse on duty and shift worked. With this information, healthcare organizations will be able to better analyze the areas that are preventing physicians from seeing patients sooner, said Dr. Lang.
If a hospital wants to decrease length of stay for ED patients, it is important for the hospital to examine its data to only decrease the length of stay to an amount of time that still allow nurses to do the work expected of them. When length of stay is shortened, sometimes it creates more work than is possible for a nurse to do because the majority of a nurse's work occurs upon patient arrival and at discharge. To avoid this, Dr. Lang suggests creating a detailed spreadsheet breaking down the amount of time it takes nurses to perform each task assigned to them for each patient and then use that data to determine what length of stay is practicable.
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