Other Chapter Resources

Arizona Chapter:  “Best Practices: Emergency Department Crowding and Ambulance Diversion”:  In late January 2001, AzCEP published “Best Practices: Emergency Department Crowding & Ambulance Diversion”. [The full report is available at: http://azcep.org/er_crowding/best_practices.html ] The report illustrates best practices utilized across the country to deal with ED crowding and ambulance diversion. The most significant finding was that most of the solutions were local, and often individual hospital based. To that end, one of the most important aspects toward solutions is to assign the task to someone, provide them with the resources to fix it, and the time to do the job. This has been characterized as the appointment of a “Hospital Resource Utilization Manager”. For an example of such a program see: “Rapid Process Redesign in a University-Based ED: Decreasing Waiting Time Intervals & Improving Patient Satisfaction” [Spaite DW, et. al. Annals EM 2002;39:168-177]