AAP Best Practices for Improving Flow and Care of Pediatric Patients in the ED Technical Report-AAP Best Practices for Improving Flow and Care of Pediatric Patients in the ED Technical Report

AAP Best Practices for Improving Flow and Care of Pediatric Patients in the ED Technical Report

Pdf Summary

This report provides a summary of best practices for improving flow, reducing waiting times, and improving the quality of care of pediatric patients in the emergency department. The report highlights the current status and needs of emergency department use and crowding in the United States, with approximately 800,000 children seeking care in the ED each day and 3.4% of US children using EDs as their source for sick care. The increase in ED utilization has overwhelmed the capacity of many EDs and emergency medical services in communities, leading to crowding and ambulance diversion. ED crowding threatens patient safety, increases medical errors, prolongs length of stay, decreases patient satisfaction, and jeopardizes the reliability and ability of the US healthcare system to effectively care for patients. This report emphasizes the need to improve ED throughput and relieve ED crowding as an essential component of improving the quality of ED care. It suggests several strategies for improving patient flow, including the use of clinical pathways, innovative staffing models, observation units, and implementation of performance measures to continuously measure and improve healthcare delivery in the ED. The report concludes that interdisciplinary collaboration is needed to develop and implement new solutions and strategies to prevent and manage ED crowding.

Meta Tag

pediatric children

pediatric crowding

pediatric boarding

pediatric patient flow

pediatric throughput

pediatric LEAN

Keywords

best practices

improving flow

reducing waiting times

improving quality of care

pediatric patients

emergency department

ED utilization

ED crowding

patient safety

improving patient flow