The overcrowding and congestion of a university hospital's emergency department is not only from shortage of admission room but from multiple factors. This kind of phenomenon restrict quality and property of treatment of emergency department
patients.
Once patient visit emergency department, patient goes through a physical and laboratory examinations, then decided whether patient could be either admit or discharge from emergency department or transfer to other hospitals. In a course of process
many
factors can delay a medical examination and treatment of emergency department patient. Therefore overerowding and congestion of emergency department is growing from bad to worse. In this article, by analyze the time required for emergency
department
patient to go through a process from initial arrival to leave omergency department. Authors made an analysis and present with following suggestions for improvement in an emergency department, therefore, causing overcrowding phenomenon, for 4, 194
patients visited Young Dong Severance Hospital emergency department from September lst, 1991 to October 31th, 1991.
@ES The results were as follows:
@EN 1) Distribution of department was Internal medicine, Emergency department and Pediatrics in order.
2) In 24 hour period, d1,546 (36.9%) patients visited during evening hours. For 3.426 patients, 90% of them spent less than 10 minutes for receipt.
3) In time interval between receipt and notification each department, 42.2% in minutes, more than 90% was within 1 hour.
4) For routine laboratory results, 1,423 patients (63%) spent between 1to 2 hours and 8.5% of them spent more than 2 hours.
5) For routine radiologic examination, 2,098 patients (63%) spent between 10 to 30 minutes and 4.1% spent more than 2 hours.
6) For 200 patients (36.6%), waiting time for special radiologic examination was between 1 to 2 hours and 7% waited more than 4 hour.
7) In time interval between notification and initial assessment of each department, 1, 789 patient (42.7%) took less than 10 minutes and more than 1 hour for 5.2% of patients.
8) Admission rate was 20.7% (869 patients) and for 203 patients it took less than 1 hour but for 12% of patients more than 12 hours for admission order.
9) 31 % of patient was to transfer to admission room within 1 hour, 20.1% of patient was after 24 hour.
10) In time interval between recoipt and discharge, 878 patient (26.6%) took 1 to 2 hours and 5.1% more than 24 hours.
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