Ten years ago, serious overcrowding in emergency departments became a national issue. Although temporary improvement of the problem occurred, the issue of ED overcrowding has now resurfaced and threatens to become worse. Overcrowding is caused by a complex web of interrelated issues described in this article. ED overcrowding has multiple effects, including placing the patient at risk for poor o...

OBJECTIVE To examine the relationship between hospital and emergency department (ED) occupancy, as indicators of hospital overcrowding, and mortality after emergency admission. DESIGN Retrospective analysis of 62 495 probabilistically linked emergency hospital admissions and death records. SETTING Three tertiary metropolitan hospitals between July 2000 and June 2003. PARTICIPANTS All pati...

ED overcrowding is a nationally recognized problem negatively impacting patient care and safety. At 1 academic medical center, there was neither a method to measure ED overcrowding nor any hospital-wide response to appropriately allocate resources to address the needs of the staff and patients. The Condition Yellow Project was undertaken to develop processes that would address ED overcrowding.

Emergency departments (EDs) face several challenges in maintaining consistent quality care in the face of steadily increasing public demand. Improvements in the survival rate of critically ill patients in the ED are directly related to the advancement of early recognition and treatment. Frequent episodes of overcrowding and prolonged waiting times force EDs to operate beyond their capacity and ...

Emergency Department overcrowding with admitted inpatients is a common international occurrence. We undertook a retrospective review to compare patient admission rates from patients presenting to our Emergency Department with the level of overcrowding with admitted inpatients on that particular day in the Emergency Department. Over the 2-year study period there was no change in the rate or abso...

Critical care constitutes a significant and growing proportion of the practice of emergency medicine. Emergency department (ED) overcrowding in the USA represents an emerging threat to patient safety and could have a significant impact on the critically ill. This review describes the causes and effects of ED overcrowding; explores the potential impact that ED overcrowding has on care of the cri...

overcrowding of broiler chicks due to lack of space induces harmful effects which act as predisposing factor in the reduction of production and performance in poultry. supplementation of antistressor products can ameliorate adverse effect of various stressors in poultry. an experiment was designed by inducing overcrowding stress and its management by supplementation of polyherbal antistressor, ...

BACKGROUND The expansion of outpatient services and the desire to provide more outpatient care than inpatient care create some problems such as the overcrowding in the outpatient clinics. Given the importance of overcrowding in the outpatient clinics, this qualitative study aimed to determine the factors influencing the overcrowding in the specialty and subspecialty clinic of a teaching hospita...