Managing negative outcome by reducing variances in the emergency department

Negative outcome management depends upon reducing variances in the structure and process of health care. In the multitask environment of a hospital's emergency department (ED), a system is required to monitor the many tasks for variances. Without a monitoring system in place, the cumulative effect of these structure and process variances will significantly contribute to negative outcomes. Structure and process variance management requires a customer-focused, process-conceptualization approach that attempts to manage the many small variances in care along the entire chain of interdependent processes making up the ED system. Process mapping is one technique that enables management to understand and anticipate variances and take corrective action to eliminate them before they occur.