ORIGINAL RESEARCH Hospitalist-Led Medicine Emergency Department Team: Associations With Throughput, Timeliness of Patient Care, and Satisfaction

rounding times. Satisfaction was obtained via survey. RESULTS: There was a relative reduction of diversion due to medicine bed capacity of 27% (4.5%-3.3%; P < 0.01), a relative reduction in the percentage of patients transferred to a medicine floor and discharged within 8 hours of 67% (1.5%-0.5%; P < 0.01), and a relative increase in the number of discharges from the ED of admitted medicine patients of 61% (4.9%-7.9%; P < 0.001). Boarded admitted patients were rounded upon 2 hours earlier (P < 0.0001) by the HMED team. Satisfaction with the HMED team was high. CONCLUSION: An HMED team can improve patient flow and decrease ED diversion while providing more timely care to patients boarded in the ED. Journal of Hospital Medicine 2012;7:562-566. V C 2012 Society of Hospital Medicine