Truman Medical Center Reduces Wait

Truman Medical Center-Hospital Hill in Kansas City, MO, is an urban non-profit hospital with an ED flow of 62,000 patients. Like many EDs, Truman frequently tells its patients who received sutures to return five to seven days later to have them removed. These patients often had to wait long periods of time for this simple procedure. The facility aimed to improve its turnaround times for these patients by creating more efficiency in their suture removal protocol. The goal was to reduce door to discharge to less than 20 minutes in more than 90 percent of its wound and suture removal patients. The new strategy was fortified by collaboration between the Nursing Shared Governance Committee and the ED Throughput Committee to ensure compliance from all parties involved. Key strategies to the protocol’s success included bedside registration for the patient and an accelerated evaluation by the physician before the triage nurse removes the sutures.