Patient flow in the ER

I am a nurse returning to the ER after 4 yrs as a manager. I have been appalled at the process for moving patients through the ER. I have worked in several ERs during my career and I am a CEN but, I have never worked in a more disorganized ER. It's really scary! I was expected to function on my own my second day there! Over a 1/3 of the staff are agency nurses who have had little to NO orientation. They have had a 50% staff turnover in the last 6 months and I can definitely see why. There is no rhyme or reason to how pts are brought back. The object is to get them in a bed which means emergent pts may sit in the waiting room for hours. Since I have been there (3 wks) 2 pts have had siezures in the waiting room. I was told after giving Cardizem IV push to leave the pt and tell the family to come and get me if anything went wrong !!! The issue I understand is that the reason things are done the way they are is "because that's the way we've always done them". The ER is not divided into emergent, urgent, and non urgent . . . anything can go in any bed as long as they are "brought straight back". I have never worked with a more disgruntled bunch of nurses and I can certainly see why. Fortunately more than half of the staff is new and the hospital has a new VP of nursing who wants to form task forces to make changes, so I would like advice and web pages or anything to do research and prepare a presentation that will convince them that there are safer and SANER ways to run an ER!
The chart is divided into two charts becasue the medical director wants it that way. You never know your pts lab results or if you have orders. When we made suggestions for change we were told that in the "future" they are going to computerized charting which will eliminate these problems but they can't say when that will happen. Several of us want to make presentations of several ways to move pts through the ER that are tried and true and hopefully they will choose one of them. Any advice will be appreciated !