Hospital overcrowding is a global public health issue that affects patient safety, quality of care and operational efficiency. Overcrowding occurs when demand for hospital beds outstrips available capacity. During periods of overcrowding, nurses and doctors are distracted from their core job functions, patients experience delay in treatment and staff may be under stress. ED crowding is a complex problem that requires a multifaceted approach to resolve.
A number of factors contribute to overcrowding in hospital emergency departments (EDs). These include natural variability in disease outbreaks, scheduled variations in surgical admissions and bed availability (e.g., elective surgery clustered early in the week), and staffing crises resulting from short-term closures of hospital beds. In addition, EDs often lack queue management strategies and the ability to use patient flow analytics to respond to variable acuity demand.
In addition to affecting the safety and quality of care, hospital overcrowding reduces patient satisfaction. This is largely due to the fact that the overcrowding process causes delays in triage, diagnosis and the initiation of therapy. It also increases the risk of patients leaving without being seen, and it can lead to dissatisfaction among staff members.
The solution to hospital overcrowding is to focus on the underlying issues and implement system-wide interventions. This requires the use of predictive models to connect volume KPIs with clinical characteristics, and the involvement of operational managers in the analysis. This is necessary to enable a hospital to identify key drivers of demand, plan and execute appropriate response activities and address them promptly before the situation escalates.