Twitter 🧵 of our @EmergencyMedBMJ paper on hospital flow:

Effect of hospital interventions to improve patient flow on emergency department (ED) clinical quality indicators

You can read the full paper here:
https://emj.bmj.com/content/early/2020/09/02/emermed-2019-208579.full
Background
🔘Nationally, approximately 25% of patients requiring acute admission breach the 4-hour ED standard.
🔘Poor inpatient flow is a key reason why patients spend more than 4 hours in ED.
🔘It also affects other areas of the system: eg. cancelled elective surgery
🧵/2
@YeovilHospital in 2015/6
🔘Cancelled elective surgery (peaked Mar 2016)
🔘Breach of 4-hour standard since Jul 2015
🔘A terrible @CareQualityComm report

First attempt to improve inpatient flow failed:
Healthcare staff/ quality care vs. management/ operational efficiencies😠
🧵/3
The first outcomes:
☀️Morning Monday: prioritise discharges on Monday mornings
🚦DTOC Thursday: established partnerships with social care through multidisciplinary stakeholder meetings each Thursday
🛏️30-bed Friday: ensure at least 30 beds were available by Friday afternoon
🧵/5
Outcomes continued
👟Next step Tuesday: encouraging staff innovation to reduce next step in care delays
🗓️14-day Wednesday: stepping up completion of care/ addressing discharge destination
🔚Weekend flow: Redesign of weekend staffing to facilitate a discharge team
🧵/6
The last outcome was enhancing the SDEC service.

There were three basic themes:
1⃣ Facilitate efficient inpatient care
2⃣ Ensure timely appropriate discharges
3⃣ Facilitate out-of-hospital, same-day acute care

🧵/7
We used the the @DHSCgovuk, @RCollEM & @theRCN ED clinical quality indicators to measure the effect of the intervention.
It was *very* beneficial on all metrics😀
✔️despite an 6-9% year on year increase in attendance
✔️minimal changes to ED staffing and service configuration
🧵/8
Although the initial intervention period was completed by Sep 2016, the iterative process of identifying problems, seeking solutions and rapid implementation continues still.
It has survived a 6-month sabbatical by its lead @SethiSimon.
It has become culture @YeovilHospital
🧵/9
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