Badgering Your Consultants to Death

This article describes a fascinating and absolutely untenable situation with numbers that just defy comprehension.

At an academic teaching hospital in Korea, 75% required consultation towards their admission rate of 36% – and their ED LOS median was seven hours.  Then, they implemented this brutal system in which an automated computer protocol paged out a consultation – and then, at the three hour mark – if there was still no disposition, they autopaged every resident in the consulted department.  Then, at the six hour mark, a page went out to every resident and faculty member in the consulted department regarding the disposition delay.  And their median ED LOS and time to disposition basically each improved by an hour and a half with this intervention.

So, this situation is insane.  Their admission rate is pretty high, but I still cannot fathom consulting on 75% of my patients.  And, these time to disposition numbers are equally alien, especially to a community emergency physician.  At my hospital, if a consultation goes over one hour in our EDIS, the badgering begins – but it’s more likely friendly, desperate begging as opposed to this hospital’s automated irritant spam.

So, shed a tear for Korea and their dysfunctional ED.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21496143