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Emergency Department Boarding Stories

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Since I was in Iraq

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“We had a lady present with elevated blood pressure and altered mental status by ambulance who had to wait 90 minutes for a bed due to inpatient boarding, EMS boarding and ED crowding. During that time she decompensated and was found to have an intracranial hemorrhage, of a type we can’t treat at our hospital.

I haven’t seen problems like this since I was in Iraq during the 2006 surge.

She had to be transferred to the university hospital two hours away after a lengthy transfer process. She later died at that university hospital. Had she been able to get to a bed where she could’ve received more rapid treatment her outcome may have been different. We have now taken two providers out of our zones to put in triage as a safety measure, but further reducing our ability to clear patients. I haven’t seen problems like this since I was in Iraq during the 2006 surge.”

Bed assignment

We are a 17 bed ED are responsible for seeing 110 patients per day.

The new reality

I work in two emergency departments. One is a 60 bed emergency department and the other is about 40 ...

Hallway beds

This ED had 30 rooms with beds, as well as five hallway beds

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