Implement education campaign to increase awareness of patients attending emergency - Dissertation Example

Simple health cases, if untreated, can become emergency cases. The most cost-effective manner of reducing patient visits to the ED department is to prevent these injuries or illnesses from occurring. The hospital should involve itself in educating its local community on the benefits of healthy lifestyles and use of anti-tobacco campaigns. The hospital should also carry out educational campaigns on the appropriate occasions to attend the emergency department. The hospital should also increase access to alternative services for health care and educate its patients on the benefits of using these services.

Additionally, the hospital should also enhance its specialist support service in order to divert some of the cases to doctors who can treat the patients quickly and efficiently, thus avoiding unnecessary return services to the ED. Finally, the hospital could enforce non-emergency, re-direction or refuse service to patients who do not meet the emergency criteria (Vincent, 2011, p. 12). These measures will help to reduce demand for ED services. In general, the reason for overcrowding of the ED department rises from inadequate financing of the emergency health department and services during a period when there is an increase in demand for these services.

Therefore, the best way to deal with it is by reducing the demand (Skow-Pucel, 2006, p. 32). Limited human and financial resources are the issues that lead to inefficiency in the ED and, as such, increasing services would be almost impossible. Most patients coming into the ED of a hospital may not be in need of emergency services, although they almost all possess a need for health care. Reducing demand by using the measures discussed, such as diverting patients to alternative health services and enhancing specialist services, is the finest method of solving the issue of overcrowding (O'Leary, 2009, p. 41). However, some policies aimed at turning away patients deemed not to be in need of ED services either explicitly or implicitly without giving assurances of access to alternative care is neither clinically nor ethically acceptable.

By reducing demand for services in the ED, the hospital should benefit by increasing their resources and productivity. By reducing abuse of the ED by the local community via decreasing demand for service, the deserving patients will be able to access quality and efficient service (Griffin, 2009, p. 27). The hospital emergency department staff will be better equipped to serve the real emergencies by making non-emergency services more attractive than emergency services. Removing non-value adding duties, improving the flow of patients through the department, and enhancing the efficiency of the ED staff should result in more productivity from the ED services currently in existence.

Clinical audits, cascade staff duties, and minimal workload are also cost-effective since the hospital can redirect resources to other functions of the emergency department such as automation and computerization (Croskerry, 2009, p. 45). The benefits from reducing demand for emergency services have a trickle-down effect on other hospital services as well (Morrison & John, 2009, p. 78). Since these non-emergency patients can be referred to specialists and alternative health services, pre-hospital care is improved.

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