A System-Wide Approach to Creating High Performance Emergency Departments

This white paper identifies key challenges faced by emergency departments and offers a discussion of potential solutions, focusing on the successes achieved in the Baylor Health Care System through its partnership with a single service provider at multiple facilities.

Overview

The emergency care system is challenged in a number of ways. Some of the key concerns include an increasing demand for services, a difficult reimbursement environment and inefficient system-wide processes that affect ED throughput. The Baylor Health Care System provides emergency medical care in eight of its fifteen facilities across the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, serving more than 375,000 emergency department patients per year. Baylor partnered with EmCare to provide management and staffing services for the eight emergency departments. This single source management infrastructure alleviates the challenges incurred from multiple providers and allows for the development and implementation of processes and procedures that can be utilized system-wide.