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New ER requirements force Massachusetts hospitals to bolster patient flow efforts

Patient Safety Monitor Alert, December 31, 2008

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As of January 1, Massachusetts hospitals will no longer be able to go on "diversion" and declare themselves unable to accept new patients via ambulance, reports The Boston Globe. The new rule has forced emergency rooms (ER) and hospitals throughout the state to reconsider their daily practices in order to increase patient flow, and ultimately patient discharge. Patients are often stuck in the ER due to a backup on patient floors.

Some hospitals have suspended teaching rounds when the doctor is called to tend to patients. Tufts Medical center has taken up the practice of requiring that phlebotomists draw patient's blood earlier in the morning in an effort to speed up test results and move up the time of discharge. Many hospitals have been using these new techniques already, which can be seen in a drop of more than 4,000 hours during which hospitals were on diversion through November 2008, compared to through November 2007.

The practice of diverting patients often was unsafe, as patients were then transferred to hospitals that did not have their medical records or at which they had no history. Additionally, diverting ambulances does nothing to affect the underlying patient flow problem existing in hospitals, the article says.

To read the article, click here.

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