Emergency Rooms Are Beginning to Enter the 21st Century

The American health care system generates considerable resentment at the emergency room level. Waiting times are customarily 3 to 6 hours or more. The medical staffs are overtaxed. Anger simmers from the waiting rooms, to the back lounges, where physicians and nurses seek temporary shelter from the tensions.

Much discussion has taken place regarding the factors that create such a dismal delivery of health care services. Now some hospitals are beginning to respond to the economic threat offered by urgent care centers. These competitors have boldly assumed a larger amount of the dollars in the emergency services marketplace.

Some of the new methodologies for coping with the constant stream of patients include systems management ideas borrowed from the business world. Now it is more common for a triage nurse to greet patients as they enter the ER. They quickly assess the urgency of treatment with form questions and an exam.  The next level of care is with a triage physician who will order the preliminary lab tests and x-rays. The focus is on obtaining an initial diagnosis. This may later be changed, but the speed at which the patient is attended to can be […]