Discharge Lounge

[gaykurtz]

Does anyone currently have a discharge lounge or discharge facility at their hospital? If so, do you have a policy that says which patients can/should be sent to the area? HAs it helped with ED flow (getting patients out of the ED and into open beds on the units)?

[amzyRN]

My last ED had one. They were patients waiting on their dc instructions, already dispoed by the MD as cleared for dc.

[NuGuyNurse2b]

We have one, i hate it. I'd rather just DC them myself instead of making a phone call, giving a report, having the pt go to the designated place, have the discharge nurse call me because the pts ALWAYS have a question. Oh and our discharge lounge requires the pt's IV to be already removed, the pt has to be ambulatory, alert/oriented...like basically the easiest people to discharge and you go through so much trouble to do it rather than just discharging them yourself. But the top brasses say it keeps the ED flow, so it stays.

[Aberdeen]

The last place I worked had one for a short period of time. It didn't work well and everyone hated it. It took longer to move the patients to the lounge than it did to discharge them from the room they were in, so the flow of the department actually slowed down. Flow did improve when the idea was abandoned a few months later and the area was turned into an extension of triage to draw labs when all the rooms were full.

[CalicoKitty, BSN, RN]

My old hospital had a discharge lounge for inpatients being discharged to open up rooms for new admits. The guidelines included being self-mobile (ambulatory or in their own wheelchair), oriented x4, and had someone expected to pick them up. There was a tech or something watching over the area. I don't know if it affected the ER or how well it worked.

My current place's ER has a discharge or results waiting area with a few chairs, for people just waiting on their paperwork to open up a stretcher. Sometimes there are discharge nurses.