1) The document discusses improving patient flow in emergency departments, which is important for timely, safe, and quality care. Efficient patient flow maximizes the number of patients treated each day without compromising care quality. 2) For an assignment, a student will interview an administrator or manager at a local emergency department to learn how they have addressed challenges to patient flow. The student will research best practices for one challenge identified. 3) Key parts of the interview and assignment include understanding the typical patient flow model, developing questions about challenges and improvement efforts, summarizing the interview, identifying industry best practices, and discussing affected stakeholders.

1. I am currently a student, and can only afford $3 to give to
complete this assignment. The paper should be 3-4 pages with
references in APA format. Please check for plagiarism as well
and grammar. My school uses Turn it in to check for plagiarism.
Any help will be more than greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Application: Improving Patient Flow in Emergency Departments
As you learned from Chapter 4 of
Hospital-Based Emergency Care
and from this week's articles,
e
mergency departments face serious challenges that impact, and
are impacted by, conditions throughout the hospital. Experts
emphasize the need to making patient flow more efficient. As
noted in the IOM Committee's report:
Patient flow, defined as the movement of patients through this
system, is an important indicator of the timeliness, safety, and
quality of the care received. Efficient patient flow ensures
maximum throughput (the number of patients treated and
discharged from the ED per day), minimizing delays at each
point of the delivery process with no decrement in the quality of
care. Impaired patient flow, on the other hand, results in
bottlenecks that prolong delays for patients already in the
system, as well as those awaiting entry (p. 133).
For this Application, you will interview at least one

2. administrator or manager working in a local emergency
department to learn how his or her ED has identified and
addressed challenges involving patient flow. On the basis of
this interview, you will select one of these challenges and do
further research about best practices to address this problem.
1.
Setting Up the Interview
Read through the entire Application to gain an overview of this
assignment.
As soon as possible, contact the emergency department at a
local hospital and ask to set up an interview with an
administrator or manager in this ED. This must be someone who
can discuss process improvement efforts in this ED related to
patient flow.
The interviewee should hold one of the following (or
comparable) positions for this ED:
Administrative director of the ED (usually non-physician)
Chief of Emergency Services or Emergency Department
(physician)
Nurse Manager for ED
Lab Manager or Imaging Manager responsible for supporting
ED
2.
Preparing for and Conducting the Interview
Review the "Input/throughput/output Model" of a patient flow
through the ED, on page 134 in
Hospital-Based Emergency Care
(
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11621&page=134
#
).

3. Consider why this is the typical model, and what the pros and
cons of this process flow are. Make sure you understand how it
represents patient flow.
Make a list of various issues related to patient flow, as
identified in Chapter 4 of
Hospital-Based Emergency Care
and your other Learning Resources. Note
when and why bottlenecks typically occur, and identify other
problems in efficient processing of ED patients. Also list
strategies used to address these challenges.
With these thoughts in mind, develop a list of questions about
the patient flow process (covering input, throughput, and/or
output phases) to ask your interviewee. Through these
questions, you should find out about challenges they have
encountered regarding patient flow, and ways they have
addressed it. Phrase these questions in your own words. At
minimum, your questions should encompass the following:
W
hat are crucial challenges this ED has faced in recent years
related to patient flow?
On what basis were these challenges identified? Were
quantitative data used to identify and confirm the existence of
problems, and if so, which types of data?
Focusing on
one
of these challenges, what process improvement or reengineering
efforts has this ED taken to address the challenge?

4. Did the department follow Lean and/or Six Sigma or other
comparable approaches in addressing this?
Did the ED use any internal or external best practices to make
these changes? If so, which ones?
Did the organization or ED establish any metrics to determine if
expected outcomes are being met? If so, what were the metrics?
Did the implemented changes achieve expected outcomes?
Conduct your interview with at least one of the administrators
or managers of a local hospital’s Emergency Department (see
list of possible interviewees by title above). Ideally, conduct
this interview in person in the hospital. If this is not feasible,
however, you may complete this interview by phone. If follow-
up questions are needed, these may be conducted by phone
and/or email.
If possible, arrange for a tour of your selected ED, so that you
may observe firsthand the layout and other notable features of
the ED that may impact patient flow.
3.
Completing the Application
Do further research to learn more about the patient flow
challenge identified by your interviewee. According to your
research, what are best practices for this process improvement
issue?
Write a 3- to 4-page paper in which you address the following:
Identify the name and organization of your interviewee (unless
that person has requested anonymity).
Summarize the responses from your interviewee to your
questions.
Based on the interview and additional research you conducted,
what is the industry best practice for this performance
improvement issue?
Which key stakeholders are likely to be affected by the
performance improvement effort, and how?
Provide with any further conclusions about the ED's operations

5. or layout, and best practices as they relate to the challenges
facing this ED.
The Application is
due by Day 7
of this week
Your written assignments must follow APA guidelines. Be sure
to support your work with specific citations from this week’s
Learning Resources and additional scholarly sources as
appropriate.