Assessing your needs

Key learning points Understand how to approach a comprehensive operations assessment, including what to measure and how to measure it. Quantify the current state of operations and the potential impact of proposed changes on clinical, operational, and financial performance. Effectively communicate the outcomes of the operations assessment to both clinical and non-clinical stakeholders, including those both inside and outside the emergency department. Introduction Over the past four decades, emergency medicine has evolved, becoming a global component of patient access strategies. As emergency medicine has gained popularity, many advanced and developing health systems have increased the number of emergency departments (EDs), expanding the scope of their services and developing tiered and specialty levels of care such as trauma centers, chest pain units, and acute stroke centers. While the growth of emergency medicine and the development of EDs has favorably impacted on access to care, speed to care, and overall clinical quality and outcomes, it has also been a victim of its own success. EDs worldwide are straining to cope with surging demand and high acuity levels. Overcrowding has become commonplace. Patient volumes are growing. Visit times are increasing, causing many nonurgent and a number of urgent and emergent patients to leave the ED without treatment and seek alternative care. Ambulance diversion is a real and growing problem in some systems.