Essay: Siloed care leads to ED waits

In a essay in Time Magazine, Dr. Zachary F. Meisel, clinical scholar and an emergency physician at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote that siloed care can lead to delays for patients waiting for treatment (Source: “'Not Mine Yet': The Problem of Patients Under Nobody's Care,” Time, March 9, 2011).

Physicians can feel a sense of responsibility for patients who are not yet their own, such as those in a hospital waiting room, but often the patients already under a physician's care come first, according to Meisel.

“So how do we tear down the walls that hinder care within health care systems?” Meisel wrote. “First, we could literally do just that: tear down the walls.

"Take the problem of an overcrowded emergency department. The conventional solution is to build a bigger ER and a larger waiting room. But some innovative emergency departments are instead shrinking or eliminating their waiting rooms altogether. In these ERs, patients are brought immediately into the treatment area regardless of how acute their illness.”