Closing the Gap in Direct Admissions: A Quality Improvement Project.

Background and objectives: Direct admissions (DAs) are nonemergent admissions to the inpatient unit that bypass the emergency department. Our institution lacked a standardized DA process, which resulted in postponement of prompt patient care. The purpose of the present study was to review and modify the existing DA process and to decrease the time between patient arrival for DA and placement of initial clinician orders.

Methods: A team was assembled and tasked with using quality improvement tools (eg, Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control, fishbone diagrams, process mapping) to streamline the DA process to decrease average time between patient arrival for DA and initial clinician orders, from 84.4 minutes in July 2018 to 60 minutes or less by June 2019, without negatively affecting patient admission loyalty questionnaire scores.

Results: In a standardized and streamlined DA process, average time between patient arrival and provider order placement decreased to less than 60 minutes. This reduction was achieved without substantially affecting patient loyalty questionnaire scores.

Conclusion: By using a quality improvement methodology, we developed a standardized DA process that resulted in prompt care for patients without decreasing admission loyalty scores.