Emergency Department Boarding Stories

"A standard inpatient med-surg unit in my facility has 24-28 patients on the nursing floor.  It is not at all unusual for the ED to be the largest "in[patient unit" in the hospital because we board so many admitted patients. We don't even blink if we ONLY have 30 boarders in our 75 bed ED.  We use hallways, aisles, external hallways to board the patients.

It starts to get unsafe once we reach 50 boarders - which happens several times a week. These doesn't take into account the psychiatric patients waiting for transfer to an inpatient psychiatric facility. Many days there are 18-24 of these patients on top of the inpatient  boarders. The regulations required to open new inpatient areas is just insane. Months and months. Please do something to allow facilities to more quickly convert and use spaces."