Using quality improvement methods at the system level to improve hospital emergency department treatment times

Because the reason for long waits in emergency departments often arises outside the emergency department, addressing the problem of long waits requires a system or hospital-wide response. This, in turn, requires mobilization of management and clinicians from across a hospital and often from outside the hospital. This article describes how the causes of long waits were presented to obtain "buy-in" from a wide variety of stakeholders and how strategies to address causes were linked in a large multihospital system.