Tag: emergency department

A recent project conducted by eight hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers in the United States, along with the Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare, has implemented methods such as Lean Six Sigma and change management to address the issue of wrong site surgeries.

Emergency room waiting times could be cut by over one third and patients’ length of stay by almost two-thirds, thanks to a new approach to the triage process of sorting patients for further assessment and treatment, according to research published in the International Journal of Six Sigma and Competitive Advantage this month. The researchers have […]

A recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates that over the past decade trips to emergency departments (ED) rose 20 percent, while the number of available emergency centers fell by 15 percent. Another study from the American Hospital Association indicated that 62 percent of hospitals feel they are at or over […]

A recent study by the National Center for Health Statistics found that, on average, an ambulance in the United States is diverted every minute to another hospital due to emergency room overcrowding. The study underscores the fact that this is a nationwide problem, and that emergency department (ED) diversions often produce a negative chain reaction […]

What happens when an emergency department (ED) undergoes major upheaval in the midst of a Six Sigma project? Just such a situation befell a newly trained Black Belt who was working on her first project at Memorial Hermann Southwest Hospital in Houston, Texas, USA. One month into the project to reduce cycle times, the ED […]

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, and more than 900,000 people annually are diagnosed with acute myocardial infarction (AMI). The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) have identified AMI as one of the early priority focus areas for hospital […]