ROCK SPRINGS – The time it takes patients to get admitted to a hospital bed from the emergency department has decreased significantly at Memorial Hospital of Sweetwater County.

Ann Marie Clevenger, the chief nursing officer at the hospital, said the wait time between when someone was admitted from the emergency department and when they received a bed was one of the criticisms often cited by patients in their hospital reviews. Clevenger said the situation was a focus for the hospital for years, with several programs initiated to help reduce the time.

However, it was only after Clevenger and her team started looking into the data associated with admissions and bed placements when barriers prolonging the process were discovered. Clevenger said that is when they started finding ways to break those barriers down.

Clevenger said one area where improvements resulted in less wait time is the admitting physicians getting a jump on writing the admission orders. Another is attributed to the hospital moving to an electronic records system, but Clevenger admits there are hundreds of variables that can impact the wait time.

Clevenger couldn’t cite specific time reductions while speaking to the hospital’s board of trustees Wednesday, however MHSC Board President Barbara Sowada said the times were cut by about half.

Clevenger said the time period is one of the quality measures utilized by the Joint Commission, an organization that accredits and certifies hospitals. According to measurement information documents, reducing the amount of time a patient is in the emergency department can improve access to care and the quality of care given. The commission also cites wait times being a problem for both small and large hospitals.

“In recent times, (emergency departments) have experienced significant overcrowding. Although once only a problem in large, urban, teaching hospitals, the phenomenon has spread to other suburban and rural healthcare organizations,” the measurement document states.