By WILLIAM DOOLITTLE
Monroe Messenger
A story in a national health magazine details the
serious problems faced by the Pocono Medical Center’s
emergency room and the successful steps taken to cure
the troubles.
The study, published in Health Management Technology,
in April of 2006 said, PMC “struggled with high bed
occupancy and surges in patient volume, six-hour wait
times in the emergency department (ED), as well as
other problems such as “lost” charts, poor
documentation and low patient satisfaction.
The study of PMC’s situation noted “Also, it was hard
to miss.. . . scores on patient satisfaction, which
averaged 20 percent, reflecting that 80 percent of
other hospitals did a better job pleasing ED
patients.”
After the emergency room completed automating, the
patient satisfaction scores reversed, with 80 percent
patient approval.
Before it was automated, the emergency department
treated 50,000 patients a year using mostly a paper
tracking and registration system. Now, more than 70,000 patients
a year visit the ER.
The story points out that the situation was so
serious that in 2001 hospital officials began to study
an automated information system for the ER.
“For starters, triage or patient screening took at
least an hour, which was too long, especially with
chest pain patients. Long wait times not only put
patients at risk, but also posed a public relations
problem for the hospital,” the magazine reports.
“The hospital needed information from patients to get
them registered and to track them, but this required a
lot of time and created the mistaken impression that
the hospital was focused more on insurance information
and medical record numbers than on patient care,” the
study found.
“The Waiting Room Is Closed” was the name of the new
policy of speeding patients through the admission
process and into the ER itself for treatment.
The results were amazing.
Data from the system supplied baseline numbers of how
to improve the operation, including:
* Improve patient length of stay; more than 50
percent of patients were in the ED more than four
hours.
* Eliminate lost charts; physicians estimated that 4
percent were “lost” and no bill was issued.
* Retain more nurses; they used an average of 23
percent agency nurses because of staffing shortages.
The emergency department at PMC now handles more than
70,000 visits a year.
