“Quite honestly, we’re not asking the hospitals for very much in terms of their effort,” Dr. Bukata said. “We’re asking them to send us 2 days’ worth of charts each month, and to fill out a baseline and monthly surveys.”

Currently, “nobody is stripping data off charts as we’re planning to do with this project,” Dr. Bukata said. “There is no other program in the country like it. No one will have the detailed information that is available when you combine detailed staffing date, throughput data, and clinical data as will be done by the EDDI.”

What to Expect

An advisory board oversees the EDDI program. That board includes Dr. Bukata and five other emergency physicians, three emergency nurses nominated by the Emergency Nurses Association, and three hospital CEOs. A “soft launch” of EDDI was conducted at ACEP’s 2008 Scientific Assembly.

Organizers expect at least 50 decision makers for emergency departments will sign a letter of intent to participate. That’s the critical mass deemed necessary to provide meaningful data comparisons, and organizers hope that many more hospitals will enroll.

“It will allow hospitals to compare their data with like hospitals to analyze and establish baselines,” said Marilyn Bromley, R.N., ACEP’s director of practice management. The comparative hospitals will be blinded, she added.

The cost to individual emergency departments is $600 per month for participation and $4 per chart abstracted for the required 2 days per month of chart extraction (which will be completed by an ACEP-contracted vendor).

For their investment, emergency department medical directors, nurse managers, and CEOs will receive detailed monthly reports on a quarterly basis allowing them to compare and track their departments’ performance compared to similar departments. They will also benefit from EDDI analyses that identify and assist in the adoption of best practices.

Improving Patient Satisfaction

For many emergency departments, participating in EDDI costs considerably less than conducting patient satisfaction surveys, and the administrators could identify factors contributing to patient dissatisfaction—and tease out solutions, Ms. Bromley said.

“If everybody was doing just fine, it wouldn’t be necessary to do this,” Dr. Bukata said. “But for most EDs, this is a struggling endeavor.

“We know that EDs are dealing with crowding issues all the time, and patients have long wait times,” Dr. Bukata added. “This is not rocket science. If people wait hours to be seen, they’re going to be unhappy.”