Adventist Health is launching a systemwide Emergency department collaborative focused on streamlining processes and enhancing the patient experience. The year-long initiative will kick off next month at Adventist Health’s annual Clinical Leaders Symposium, with the first learning session being held in October officially beginning the 12-month process.

The goal of the project is to have superior EDs with exceptional results in patient throughput, quality and service. More specifically, the collaborative will focus on patient flow (wait times, door to admit times, processes, etc.), patient satisfaction and the quality of patient care as it relates to the system’s already standardized Core Measures (e.g. AMI, pneumonia and other clinical indicators).

“Our Emergency departments are the front doors of our hospitals and the contact there is often reflective of the overall patient experience,” said Judy Blair, RN, director of Clinical Effectiveness for Adventist Health and project director of the collaborative. “This initiative is aimed at not only improving processes but we’re hopeful that it will propel our patient satisfaction scores into the top quartile and our clinical indicators into the top deciles.”

In addition to improved ED processes, increased patient satisfaction and higher quality indicators, Blair is hopeful that the collaborative will decrease the length of stay in our EDs. “One of the biggest complaints you hear about going to the ED is that you have to wait forever—whether it be in the waiting room, to see a physician or to receive test results. Our hope is that this project will show each hospital where the bottlenecks are, thus streamlining and shortening the entire process.”

All of Adventist Health’s hospitals will take part in the project by participating in the August launch, three learning sessions with expert faculty, monthly reports and data collection, and various other project-specific activities.