Almost a quarter of emergency department patients accepted for a general hospital bed waited at least four hours before an inpatient team took over their care, according to a study of 56 emergency departments published in JAMA. Some waited more than 24 hours.
The measure matters because it is not the same as boarding time, and much of the coverage of this study has blurred the distinction between the two. Boarding is the total time an admitted patient physically remains in the emergency department while waiting for an upstairs bed. What the researchers examined is narrower and, for patient safety, arguably more consequential: the point at which responsibility for that patient formally shifts from the emergency team to an inpatient team that can manage medications, order therapy assessments, and begin discharge planning.
