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Healthcare Journal of Baton Rouge |
March / April 2010 Issue
if at all.” Yet it’s something that most hospitals scrutinize close-
ly and address aggressively. OLOL recently instituted an
Eclipsys bed board system that allows the ED to preregister
elective surgical patients and get an idea of where their occu-
pancy will be on any given day. Rhorer can sign on in the
emergency department and see where beds are available in
the entire hospital and where patients are pending admission.
It eliminates the human factor of calling different departments
or waiting for news that a bed is available. However ED occu-
pancy is harder to control, admits Rhorer. “Wednesdays and
Thursdays are higher volume days at any hospital because
that’s when the majority of elective surgeries are done. One
cannot turn off the emergency department and one cannot
hedge the bet of reducing elective surgeries on those days
because the variability would not be cost efficient. You need to
keep a certain amount of business going to be able to provide
your services.” Rhorer said that any large institution has to
constantly monitor its census, constantly look at its growth,
and continue to add bed space as needed. “Forecasting this is
very difficult. You never know who’s opening up a new market
down the street from you that may change your elective sur-
gery schedule very dramatically.”
Conerly also admits that boarding can be an issue, particular-
ly in the winter months when the hospital is busier. “We may
have two or three days a month where we have to hold
patients for longer than normal, waiting for a room to clear. We
might get someone that comes in during the night and the next
morning when physicians make rounds and discharge
patients we’ll get a bed for them.” The real issue at Lane, how-
ever, is having to hold psychiatric patients until they can trans-
fer them to a mental health facility. Lane does not provide psy-