Reducing delays is critical to improving other aspects of care in emergency departments, including safety, patient and staff satisfaction, and cost control. In certain times and situations, solutions that focus on individuals parts — such as bypassing triage, bedside registration, ancillary services, eliminating the waiting room, fast tracks, and nurse-initiated orders — have proven effective. However, they have not often resulted in optimizing the entire emergency department.

In this Community, organizations will focus on a systems approach to optimizing flow. The approach is based on demand capacity management, enhanced patient intake and optimization of key patient segments. It allows for interventions tailored to the demand, circumstances, and key bottlenecks of individual departments. Concepts from the theory of constraints, queuing theory, managing variation and lean production will guide the work. Participants will be able to take advantage of operational assessment tools.