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Taking charge: Data mapping ED call

Hospitalist Leadership Connection, April 1, 2008

To find a hospital not struggling with ED call is to find the proverbial needle in a haystack-if there is a needle at all. When working with your medical staff leaders to manage your facility's on-call coverage challenge, one of the first steps is obtaining data that illustrates the extent of the problem. Gathering data could include any of the following processes:

• Inventorying the on-call and patient-care burden for individual specialties
• Counting the total number of on-call days for each specialty and each participant for several months
• Determining the frequency of call and the number of insured and uninsured patients
• Researching what other hospitals in the area are doing
• Summarizing the total burden of consults, admissions, surgeries, and inpatient follow-up responsibilities
• Assessing the office burden for follow-up care, including the total number of visits and out-of-pocket costs

Collecting these facts will allow you and your peers begin to chart a course of action that will serve both the medical staff's and the hospital's interests.

To learn more about overcoming the ED call conundrum, see Emergency Department On-Call Strategies: From Team Management to Compensation Plans, by Kimberly Mobley; Richard Sheff, MD; and Bradley Zlotnick, MD, FACEP.

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