A Literature Review: Emergency Department Overcrowding and Its Solution

Emergency department overcrowding was a obstacle of delivery healthcare services in emergency department. This condition was happened in emergency department when imbalance between enhancing of visiting patients number  and inadequately of staffing capacities and facilities. This condition had impact on decreasing quality of emergency department services including delaying medication time, increasing mortality rates, decreasing patient satisfaction, and hospital’ profit loss. Comprehensive understanding about emergency department overcrowding concept and its solution was needed to reduce incidents of ED overcrowding and its impact in healthcare services. The aim of the study was to provide evidance-based related to articles that discusses  emergency department overcrowding and its solution. Material and method: The study was literature review using database journal resources from PubMed, Proquest, ScienDirect, and Google scholar with using keyword emergency department (ED); Overcrowding. Inclusion criteria were 1) research articles that contained information about emergency department overcrowding: manifestation, causes, and impact, 2) Articles describing solution to reduce ED overcrowding, 3) All kinds that suitable with study design and review. Time filter between 2012-2022. The Result: from 9 selected articles (7 primary studies and 2 systematic reviews) showed that emergency department overcrowding was consisted of variables were  manifestation, causes, impact and solution.  Conclusion: Emergency department was caused by increasing patients number in ED and inadequate staffing capacity and equipment availability. ED overcrowding effected on patient services, healthcare delivery system proccess, and quality care. Recommendation: reducing incidents of ED overcrowding through identification of each causes factors, selecting intervention based on primary problem, strategy  to implementation and preparing of supporting resources.