Improving Emergency Department Flow: Reducing Turnaround Time for Emergent CT Scans

AMIA Annu Symp Proc. 2018 Dec 5:2018:897-906. eCollection 2018.

Abstract

Emergency departments across the U.S. are more congested than ever, and there is a pressing need to create capacity by improving patient flow. The long turnaround time of imaging tests, such as computed tomography (CT) scans, are a major reason for delays in treatment and disposition. Over an eight-month pre-intervention period during which 10,063 CT scans were ordered in our emergency department, the average time from a CT order to the availability of the radiologist's final report was 5.9 hours (median=4.2 hours). We created a multi-disciplinary team of physicians, nurses, technicians, transporters, informaticians, and engineers to identify barriers and implement technical as well as human-factors solutions. In the corresponding eight-month period after the implementation of the intervention bundle, there was a 1.2 hour reduction in CT turnaround time, despite a 13.8% increase in the number of CT scans ordered (p<0.0001).

MeSH terms

  • Data Analysis
  • Emergency Service, Hospital / organization & administration*
  • Humans
  • Patient Care Team
  • Personnel, Hospital / education
  • Radiology Department, Hospital / organization & administration
  • Time-to-Treatment*
  • Tomography, X-Ray Computed*
  • Workflow