How MUSC uses telehealth to reduce ED wait times
“Waiting time is wasted time,” said Jeanhyong “Danny” Park, M.D., director of innovation for the Division of Emergency Management Telehealth and the Medical University of South Carolina.
He’s talking about the longer waits some patients may experience when visiting the emergency department – which can be long enough that a patient may leave without ever being seen.
The ED team at the Medical University of South Carolina has embraced a solution that has reduced waiting times during certain hours and brought the number of patients who leave before being seen to almost zero. During those hours, patients can first be seen by a telehealth provider, who conducts the initial screening, orders and documentations; they then can assign a patient to the appropriate treatment space. In short, patients get triaged faster, so more serious cases get treatment, rather than hanging out in the waiting room. For less emergent cases, the telehealth provider can monitor the progress of the patient’s workup – so if something goes wrong, the in-person staff can be alerted quickly.
“This early engagement with a provider means that we can initiate patient-specific diagnostics sooner, including ultrasounds and CT scans,” said Marc Bartman, M.D., director of the Division of Emergency Medicine Telehealth at MUSC. “By starting a workup earlier, we are saving our patients time and money. Our goal is to increase the quality, efficiency and overall experience our patients have while in the ED.”