Standardizing admission and discharge processes to improve patient flow: A cross sectional study

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Abstract

Background

The aim of this study was to evaluate how hospital capacity was managed focusing on standardizing the admission and discharge processes.

Methods

This study was set in a 900-bed university affiliated hospital of the National Health Service, near Barcelona (Spain). This is a cross-sectional study of a set of interventions which were gradually implemented between April and December 2008. Mainly, they were focused on standardizing the admission and discharge processes to improve patient flow. Primary administrative data was obtained from the 2007 and 2009 Hospital Database. Main outcome measures were median length of stay, percentage of planned discharges, number of surgery cancellations and median number of delayed emergency admissions at 8:00 am. For statistical bivariate analysis, we used a Chi-squared for linear trend for qualitative variables and a Wilcoxon signed ranks test and a Mann–Whitney test for non-normal continuous variables.

Results

The median patients’ global length of stay was 8.56 days in 2007 and 7.93 days in 2009 (p < 0.051). The percentage of patients admitted the same day as surgery increased from 64.87% in 2007 to 86.01% in 2009 (p < 0.05). The number of cancelled interventions due to lack of beds was 216 patients in 2007 and 42 patients in 2009. The median number of planned discharges went from 43.05% in 2007 to 86.01% in 2009 (p < 0.01). The median number of emergency patients waiting for an in-hospital bed at 8:00 am was 5 patients in 2007 and 3 patients in 2009 (p < 0.01).

Conclusions

In conclusion, standardization of admission and discharge processes are largely in our control. There is a significant opportunity to create important benefits for increasing bed capacity and hospital throughput.

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Most cited references 13

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Interprofessional collaboration: effects of practice-based interventions on professional practice and healthcare outcomes.

Merrick Zwarenstein, JoAnne Goldman, Scott Reeves (2009)

Poor interprofessional collaboration (IPC) can negatively affect the delivery of health services and patient care. Interventions that address IPC problems have the potential to improve professional practice and healthcare outcomes. To assess the impact of practice-based interventions designed to change IPC, compared to no intervention or to an alternate intervention, on one or more of the following primary outcomes: patient satisfaction and/or the effectiveness and efficiency of the health care provided. Secondary outcomes include the degree of IPC achieved. We searched the Cochrane Effective Practice and Organisation of Care Group Specialised Register (2000-2007), MEDLINE (1950-2007) and CINAHL (1982-2007). We also handsearched the Journal of Interprofessional Care (1999 to 2007) and reference lists of the five included studies. Randomised controlled trials of practice-based IPC interventions that reported changes in objectively-measured or self-reported (by use of a validated instrument) patient/client outcomes and/or health status outcomes and/or healthcare process outcomes and/or measures of IPC. At least two of the three reviewers independently assessed the eligibility of each potentially relevant study. One author extracted data from and assessed risk of bias of included studies, consulting with the other authors when necessary. A meta-analysis of study outcomes was not possible given the small number of included studies and their heterogeneity in relation to clinical settings, interventions and outcome measures. Consequently, we summarised the study data and presented the results in a narrative format. Five studies met the inclusion criteria; two studies examined interprofessional rounds, two studies examined interprofessional meetings, and one study examined externally facilitated interprofessional audit. One study on daily interdisciplinary rounds in inpatient medical wards at an acute care hospital showed a positive impact on length of stay and total charges, but another study on daily interdisciplinary rounds in a community hospital telemetry ward found no impact on length of stay. Monthly multidisciplinary team meetings improved prescribing of psychotropic drugs in nursing homes. Videoconferencing compared to audioconferencing multidisciplinary case conferences showed mixed results; there was a decreased number of case conferences per patient and shorter length of treatment, but no differences in occasions of service or the length of the conference. There was also no difference between the groups in the number of communications between health professionals recorded in the notes. Multidisciplinary meetings with an external facilitator, who used strategies to encourage collaborative working, was associated with increased audit activity and reported improvements to care. In this updated review, we found five studies (four new studies) that met the inclusion criteria. The review suggests that practice-based IPC interventions can improve healthcare processes and outcomes, but due to the limitations in terms of the small number of studies, sample sizes, problems with conceptualising and measuring collaboration, and heterogeneity of interventions and settings, it is difficult to draw generalisable inferences about the key elements of IPC and its effectiveness. More rigorous, cluster randomised studies with an explicit focus on IPC and its measurement, are needed to provide better evidence of the impact of practice-based IPC interventions on professional practice and healthcare outcomes. These studies should include qualitative methods to provide insight into how the interventions affect collaboration and how improved collaboration contributes to changes in outcomes.

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Measuring appropriate use of acute beds. A systematic review of methods and results.

M. S McDonagh, D Smith, M. Goddard (2000)

A systematic review of the methods used to assess appropriateness of acute bed use and the evidence on the scale of inappropriate use in different patient groups is presented. Issues of generalisability of the findings are also addressed. Criteria based tools are the accepted way of measuring inappropriate days of stay and admissions, although opinion based classification is very common. While a number of tools exist, few have been adequately tested for reliability and validity. The Appropriateness Evaluation Protocol (AEP) is the most commonly used tool, and has been tested more widely. It appears to be both reliable and valid. An estimated 29% of admissions to acute psychiatric may be inappropriate. Regarding days of care after admission, between 24 and 58% of stays were not judged to be appropriate for continued stay on an acute ward. The need for continued acute psychiatric care may become lower as patients experience continued stay in the acute setting. A lack of housing and community support was the most commonly cited reason preventing discharge. Rates of inappropriate use appear to be higher for older patients than for the general population. Wide variation in rates of inappropriate days of stay was found, but it may be safe to assume that inappropriate use is greater than 20% across a wide variety of settings. Reasons for older patients to remain in an acute hospital bed after medically necessary are typically moderate nursing care needs (i.e. long-term care). The estimates of inappropriate use in other groups was found to be highly variable. Before definitive conclusions on the inappropriate use of acute beds can be made, future research needs to take into account the methodological problems discussed here.

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Active bed management by hospitalists and emergency department throughput.

E Bessman, K B Kolodner, Robert Percy Marshall … (2008)

When emergency departments are overcrowded, ambulances are diverted. Interventions focused primarily on emergency departments have had limited success. To discover whether an active bed management, quality improvement initiative could reduce ambulance diversion hours and emergency department throughput times. Pre-post study that compared institutional data from November 2006 to February 2007 (intervention period) with data from November 2005 to February 2006 (control period). Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, Baltimore, Maryland. All adult patients registered in the emergency department during the study periods. Active bed management is a hospitalist-led, multifaceted intervention that consists of proactive management of hospital and departmental resources, including twice-daily bed management rounds in the intensive care unit and regular visits to the emergency department to assess congestion and flow; assignment of all admissions to the department of medicine and facilitating transfer from the emergency department to the appropriate care setting; and support from the "bed director," who can mobilize additional resources in real time to augment hospital capacity to address emergency department throughput problems. Emergency department throughput times and ambulance diversion hours. The emergency department census was 8.8% higher during the intervention period than in the control period (17 573 patients vs. 16 148 patients). Throughput for patients who were admitted decreased by 98 minutes (SD, 10) (from 458 minutes in the control period to 360 minutes during the intervention period). Throughput for patients who were not admitted did not change (274 minutes vs. 269 minutes). The percentage of hours that the emergency department was on "yellow alert" (ambulance diversion because of emergency department crowding) decreased 6%, and the percentage of hours on "red alert" (ambulance diversion due to lack of intensive care unit beds in the hospital) decreased 27%. Staffing, length of stay, case-mix index, intensive care unit transfer rates, and mortality rates were stable across the 2 periods. Pre-post designs are less effective than randomized, controlled trials on the study design hierarchy, and unidentified external forces may have influenced the results. The study was done at a single hospital, and the findings may not be generalizable to other institutions. Emergency department throughput and diversion status improved with the implementation of an active bed management process coordinated by hospitalists.

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Author and article information

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): BMC Health Serv Res

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): BMC Health Serv Res

Title: BMC Health Services Research

Publisher: BioMed Central

ISSN (Electronic): 1472-6963

Publication date Collection: 2012

Publication date (Electronic): 28 June 2012

Volume: 12

Page: 180

Affiliations

[1 ]Clinical Services, Hospital Universitari de Bellvitge IDIBELL, L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona, 08907, Spain

[2 ]Hospital Universitari de Bellvitge IDIBELL, C. Feixa Llarga s.n, L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona, 08907, Spain

[3 ]Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Fundació Josep Laporte, Barcelona, 08041, Spain

[4 ]Health Department, Institut d’Estudis de la Salut, Barcelona, 08005, Spain

[5 ]Universidad de Vic, Vic, 08500, Spain

[6 ]Hospital Universitari de Bellvitge, IDIBELL, L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona, 08907, Spain

Article

Publisher ID: 1472-6963-12-180

DOI: 10.1186/1472-6963-12-180

PMC ID: 3407754

PubMed ID: 22741542

SO-VID: 030a3664-b06f-4470-a27a-6693762c74d9

License:

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Standardizing admission and discharge processes to improve patient flow: A cross sectional study

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Abstract

Background

Methods

Results

Conclusions

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Active Travel Studies

Most cited references 13

Interprofessional collaboration: effects of practice-based interventions on professional practice and healthcare outcomes.

Measuring appropriate use of acute beds. A systematic review of methods and results.

Active bed management by hospitalists and emergency department throughput.

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