Waiting for a Bed, but Not for Care: Emergency Department Boarding Study Finds Wide Variation in Handoffs

Waiting for a bed, but not for care: Emergency department boarding study finds wide variation in handoffs

Every day across the country, patients wait hours or days in clogged emergency departments for a hospital bed to open—a well-known crisis called boarding. Now, a new study published in JAMA looks more closely at what happens after doctors decide patients are sick enough to be admitted. The findings could have important patient safety and public policy implications.

Study Measures Time to Inpatient Care for Patients Boarding in Emergency

A new study in JAMA is examining an overlooked interval in hospital care: the time between a patient’s admission to a general medical service and the initiation of inpatient management. The research focuses on how this interval varies from one patient to another and from one hospital to another, raising a fundamental question about the […]