An Analysis of the Los Angeles County Hospital Emergency Room
Learning Team Operations Management Plan
The problem of emergency department overcrowding has become an important issue for many emergency departments throughout the city and county of Los Angeles. Patients frequently have to wait hours just to get into the emergency department to be seen by a physician or other healthcare professionals. The problem does not seem to be getting better as times goes on, but indeed studies seem to indicate that the condition is growing worse. At a local Los Angeles County Hospital
(King Drew Medical Center) emergency department, we found that the problem is especially severe. Patients are forced to wait as long as
8-12 hours to be seen and treated by physicians. This paper will propose a plan that will help to alleviate this critical problem of emergency department overcrowding and long patients waits for services. Problem Statement
There is a nationwide shortage of emergency room space and an increased demand for emergency services. Public health officials, hospital executives, and doctors are increasingly concerned about emergency department ''boarding," because of the potential impact on both patient safety and staff burnout (Kowalczyk, 2005). Our paper will attempt to solve the problem of emergency department overcrowding and long waiting times. We propose to first create a flow chart of present operations from the beginning of the emergency department visit to the discharge or admission of the patient. We believe that the process can be analyzed and changed in a way that improvement can be accomplished by improving efficiency and flow of traffic through the emergency department processes.
Null Hypothesis
Our study attempts to identify a serious problem at a local Los
Angeles County Hospital that appears to have plausible solutions.
Looking at other similar hospitals throughout the nation and abroad, it appears that restructuring and appropriate panning may help to alleviate long patients’ waits for services. The null hypothesis states that changes in the processes of triage, registration, evaluation, treatment and disposition will shorten waiting times and improve efficiency (mu= changes in process). The alternative hypothesis states that changing in the process of triage, registration, evaluation, treatment and disposition will not change or improve waiti...
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...y will be made and expenses reduced by a more efficient process.
References
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The challenges that all acute care hospitals and facilities faces are the demand for highly specialized services has increased. The US population is constantly aging and the elderly tend to need more acute care services. Because many people lack health insurance, they tend to use emergency rooms in the hospitals as their source of care. The increase demand in acute care prompted hospitals to expand their facility
A vast majority of our population find operating a manual transmission, or stick shift, to be extremely difficult. However, in actuality all it takes is some serious practice and devotion to make driving a stick shift like second nature. For successful driving, the same steps must be followed each time the car is driven.
Because of the lack of organization with the health care providers in Canada, the wait times are too long and can cause serious complications to any condition the patient went in for in the first place. This situation of how the health care system can resolve wait times was brought to the government but they continue to ignore the proposals brought to them. It is possible to resolve the problems of wait times without extreme change and expenses in the health care system. The solution is to be found in the reorganization of the health care providers. Lack of assistance in the emergency room can make ones illness to become worse, therefore, causes the patient to be forced to wait in emergency rooms for an extended period of time and when they are finally seen by a health care provider, the outcome is very poor due to lack of registered staff, physicians and proper assessment(Goldman & Macpherson, 2005, p.40). The objective of this paper is to discuss and critically analyze the conditions of emergency waiting rooms. The specific issue this paper intends to explore is extensive and prolonged waiting times for patients accessing health care, patients who need urgent treatment and the vulnerability of elderly patients and children. With an in-depth critique of the barriers to health care and shortcomings of emergency rooms, strategies will be provided to enhance a health care system that makes it more accessible and efficient.
Scottish Intercollegiate Guideline Network (SIGN) 95 (2007): Management of Chronic Heart Failure (Online). Available at: http://www.sign.ac.uk/pdf/sign95.pdf (Accessed 8th June 2010)
Heart failure is a major clinical, social and economic problem in the United Kingdom according to the Department of Health [DH] (2013).The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence [NICE] (2010) reported that about 900,000 people suffer from heart failure in the United Kingdom. The National Institute for Cardiovascular Outcomes Research [NICOR] (2011) conducted a national audit which found that one in every 20 people over the age of 65 is diagnosed with heart failure which demonstrates that it mainly affects the elderly. As a leading cause of mortality, heart failure contributes to more than 6,000 deaths each year (NICOR, 2011). Newly diagnosed cases of heart failure have a 40% risk of dying within a year (NICOR, 2011). Despite advances in therapy, mortality is still high and only half of patients are alive five years after being diagnosed with heart failure (NICE, 2010).
There are multiple cardiovascular diseases that can occur in some people that can be moderate and some severe. A heart attack is one of them and it happens when blood is blocked by a clot, making the heart unable to pump blood throughout the body. Most of cardiovascular diseases are related to lifestyles and other non-preventable factors like ages. Coronary artery disease is a heart disease, that is caused by atherosclerosis, which is a buildup of plaque in the arteries which causes less blood flow to the heart. If plaque were to rupture it can block blood vessels which then leads to “unstable angina or a heart attack” (NHLBI). The heart also has different heart rhythms, people with bradycardia have a slow heart rate sometimes below 60. Some causes of bradycardia are increased vagal tone, SA disease, and digitoxin od. However, sometimes this can be normal in athletes who are very fit. On the opposite side we have tachycardia, which has a heart greater than 100 BPM. The causes for tachycardia usually are exercise, fever, anxiety, hypovolemia, anemia, pump failure, hypoxia, and high parathyroid
First, is the inability of the heart to maintain adequate cardiac output to support full functions; and second, is the recruitment of implements planned to maintain the cardiac reserve. Preload represents the stiffing that exists in the walls of the heart as an outcome of diastolic filling. Afterload represents the force to contract the heart, which must produce to eject blood from the filled atriums. Contractility is the ability of the contractile fundamentals of the heart muscle to interact and shorten against a load. Overall cardiac output is the amount of blood that the heart pumps each minute.
Emergency room physicians are on the front lines in a crisis, caring for everyone from trauma victims to sick kids. An ability to think quickly and care for a wide variety of patients makes them valuable assets at every hospital. It also brings some perks. When sudden illness or acute injury strikes, patients turn to hospital emergency rooms for immediate medical assistance. An ER doctor, or emergency medicine specialist, is a physician who diagnoses and treats illnesses and injuries in a hospital emergency room or other urgent care setting. Emergency medicine is a financially rewarding career, and it also comes with the reward of saving lives. ER doctors require intensive training to know how to shoulder their intensive responsibilities.
When I arrived SB was in bed asleep. I woke SB up to give SB her medicine, SB received her 7 AM, 9 AM medication and eye drops. Around 10:10 Sheila informed me she was dizzy and needed to use the rest room. SB attempted to get up and to use her walker. SB made it to the hallway and was not able to walk anymore because her walker's back wheel was not working. I assisted SB to the bathroom. When leaving I had to catch SB a few times. I called the emergency line because Sheila was saying she was dizzy and her walker was not properly working. At 11:52 AM I was assisting SB out from the bathroom and I went back into the bathroom to clean up after her. While I was in the bathroom, I asked SB a few times if she was fine and needed any help. I heard
Many compensatory mechanisms are stimulated in heart failure. These mechanisms involve rising ventricular preload, or the Frank-Starling mechanism, by ventricular dilatation and volume expansion, peripheral vasoconstriction to firstly sustains perfusion to significant organs, myocardial hypertrophy to protect wall strain as the heart expands, kidney sodium and water retention to improve ventricular preload, and start of the adrenergic nervous system, which elevates heart beat and contractile function. The activation of neurohormonal vasoconstrictor systems, which include RAAS, the adrenergic nervous system, and non-osmotic release of vasopressin will control these compensatory mechanisms (Henry & Abraham).
So you are buying a new car and you ask yourself, Manual or Automatic? So choose. I told you the pros and cons on automatics and manuals. I told you which kind I like best. And even threw an opinion from another source. But in the end the choice is all yours. I can not tell you what kind of car to drive. What kind of transmission to get. Or even how to drive it, that is your prerogative. All I can tell you is that if you want some excitement in your ride, and do not want to spend a lot of money in the maintenance of you car, your best choice is a manual transmission. Even though manual transmissions are "it", for lack of a better word, in the end, it all comes down to the individual's preference
Organizations use financial statements and ratio analysis assess financial performance viability. The ratio analysis are used to identify trends and to perform organizational comparison (financial) with other companies within same industry. Ratio analysis, using data reported on the financial statements, are divided into five major categories: common size, liquidity, solvency, efficiency, and profitability. This paper will assess the financial stability of John Hopkins Hospital (JHH) using the five ratio analysis.
Emergency room physicians see many incommensurable types of injuries everyday. The six most common injuries occurring in the ER are from trampolines, lawn mowers, playgrounds, swimming pool, bikes, and burns. These kinds of damage are all things that ER physicians could see on a daily basis. From acquiring all this knowledge, I have decided that I want to enter the field of medicine, as an emergency room physician. Granted that emergency room physician jobs are stressful, due to the fact that they are dealing with injured and upset people 24/7. WIthin the medical field there are always risks of personal harm. Due to the risk this occupation holds has intrigued me from the beginning. Also to further gain my knowledge on what emergency room physicians do, I went to various sites on the internet. These sites informed me about the emergency room physician job description, characteristics, salary and everything I need to know about emergency room physicians.
It is difficult to understand that the basic function of a automobile hasn’t changed in the past 106 years.
Hospitals play an important role in the health care system (Hospitals, n.d.). They are health care institutions that have an organized medical and other professional staff, and inpatient facilities, and deliver medical, nursing and related services 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. Hospitals offer a varying range of acute, convalescent and terminal care using diagnostic and curative services in response to acute and chronic conditions arising from diseases as well as injuries and genetic anomalies. In doing so they generate essential information for research, education and management. Traditionally oriented on individual care, hospitals are increasingly forging closer links with other parts of the health sector and communities in an effort