An Admission Unit: A Vital Link to Patient Flow

Enhancement of patient flow through a hospital should improve patient access to care, optimizing outcomes by enabling timely diagnostics and intervention by clinicians.1 Healthcare facilities in today's environment experience overcrowding; hospital-wide waits, and delays. Bottlenecks must be identified, with solutions implemented in order for demand to be matched to capacity. The matching of capacity and demand for services within a hospital are complex functions of variables and queues across the organization.2 Patient flow is defined as the observable process that a patient experiences during their healthcare delivery process.3 Although few hospitals are designed to achieve optimal flow of patients, the emergency department (ED), intensive care units (ICUs), operating rooms, and related pre- and postcare areas tend to be major bottlenecks because they have noninterchangeable resources.4