Improving patient flow through collaboration.

For over two decades, capacity issues within Edmonton hospitals have existed. Crowded emergency departments with numerous patients waiting for admission into inpatient beds has made patient flow a topic at all administrative levels for all services. From a systems perspective, most strategies have simply displaced the problem from one part of the system to another. If we are going to make a true difference, a "big picture" systems approach is required and traditional ways of doing business need to be challenged. Like any discussion around flow, inputs and outputs must have a level of equilibrium and equality, or bottlenecks will occur. Although patient flow has been a huge focus across the continuum of care, discharge planning traditionally has remained with the provider where the patient currently is, as opposed to where the team feels the patient's end destination will be.