Luis Lobón, MD, MS, chief of emergency medicine at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital (BWFH) and vice chair of community emergency medicine at Brigham Health, noticed some patients were leaving the BWFH Emergency Department (ED) without being seen by a clinician.
“We wanted to make sure people were safe and find out their reasons for leaving,” he says.
Lobón’s team now calls each patient who checks into the ED but leaves without being treated. The conversations provided the ED with insights into how to serve the community more efficiently.
“Patients are delighted when I call; it’s a show of good faith,” says Jane Flint, an ED patient advocate. “I think people like feeling they are being heard and that their feedback can make a difference.”
“The program is helping us figure out our staffing and making us think about how to best use our space and resources,” adds Paul Chen, MD, associate chief of emergency medicine at BWFH. “It has been so successful that the ED at Brigham and Women’s Hospital is implementing a similar program.”
