Definition of "Admit Time"

Revised February 2023

Originally approved June 2016

“Admit time” is defined as the time when the “Order to Admit” is placed by the emergency department (ED) physician, or the physician assistant or nurse practitioner working as part of the emergency physician-led team, or the time when the inpatient bed request is placed, whichever is earliest.

This current definition does not necessarily equate to "decision to admit" by the ED physician which may be earlier than the admit time. The “decision to admit” intends to capture completion of the emergency physician’s cognitive workflow and identification that the patient needs to be admitted.

This definition may be difficult to operationalize in some environments. In those cases, an alternate definition that could be used, as developed by the Emergency Department Benchmarking Alliance in 2014:

First documented date and time of the disposition to admit the
patient from the ED. As admission processes vary at different
hospitals, this can use the first documented time of any of the
following: 1) admission order (this may be an operational order
rather than the hospital admission to inpatient status order),
2) disposition order (must explicitly state to admit),
3) documented bed request, or 4) documented acceptance from admitting physician. This is not the “bed assignment time” or
“report called” time.