How PMC's ER fixed serious problem

By William Doolittle
For the Messenger

The Pocono Medical Center's emergency room suffered serious problems in the past and a detailed study outlines the successful steps taken to cure
 them.

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:

• Improved 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, and although many patients may still disagree, it appears as if the ER has gone a long way toward solving its "satisfaction" problems.