ASP helps ERs cope with overcrowding

by Julekha Dash

February 21, 2001 —

At any given time, about 10% of the emergency rooms in northern Virginia hospitals are filled to capacity, according to Pat Walters, senior vice president at Inova Health System.

That can add up for a health care network like Inova, which receives 150,000 emergency room visits per year at its five member hospitals in Alexandria, Falls Church and Fairfax, Va.

But new technology may help hospitals better cope with overcrowding in emergency rooms.

Last week, Chantilly, Va.-based EYT Inc., formerly known as Ernst & Young Technologies, announced an application service provider (ASP) system aimed at helping hospitals communicate with one another and with emergency management service (EMS) agencies about bed capacity.

Better Information Availability

"It doesn't solve the problem of overcrowding, but it allows us to get better information on EMS systems [and] who has beds available," said Walters. Falls Church-based Inova finished beta tests of the ASP system earlier this year and plans to go live with it on March 1.

In the past, emergency room officials sent faxes to a county's EMS headquarters to share capacity information, said Walters. When the network's five hospitals go live, they will be able to go to a Web site and provide information on capacity that can be accessed systemwide.

The problem of overcrowding in emergency rooms has been a growing concern in the health care industry for years. The number of U.S. emergency departments decreased from 6,291 in 1995 to 4,995 in 1997, but emergency room visits have increased from 89.8 million in 1992 to 100.4 million in 1998, according to figures provided by the American College of Emergency Physicians in Irving, Texas.

A Good Fit

An ASP model suits health care because of its rapid deployment and low cost, said John Madden, an analyst at Boston-based Summit Strategies Inc. "Hospitals don't want to have to implement complex applications themselves," he explained.

Inova, which began beta-testing the technology last summer, is currently paying $100 per month for the service.

"If [it] was complicated and expensive, I wouldn't have done it," said Walters.

Andy Feinstein, team leader of the EYT project, said that while the company hasn't yet determined pricing for the services, it will charge hospitals "well under" $1,000 per month to use the software.

David Dodge, a systems engineer at MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland, said that in his organization, officials communicate emergency room capacity by phone. If that information were sent via the Internet, it would save time and could reach more people more quickly, he said.

While reporting on the status of available beds is usually accurate, it's occasionally "delayed or confused," Dodge said. "[Sometimes]" a change in status is not communicated to the dispatch teams or other emergency departments."

Chris Coulter, business systems manager at Archbold Medical Center in Thomasville, Ga., said the technology may be useful in a metropolitan setting, but it wouldn't be needed in a rural facility like Archbold, which is the only medical center in the community.

Mark Anderson, head of research at Stamford, Conn.-based Meta Group Inc., said EYT's application can be useful, but it isn't foolproof.

"[It's] only as good as the data," he noted.

Computerworld