"RAPID" team triage: one hospital's approach to patient-centered team triage

Patients who present to the emergency department want definitive care by a health care provider who can perform an initial assessment, initiate treatment, and implement a disposition plan. The traditional "nurse triage" model often creates barriers to the process of rapidly evaluating patients. Therefore, innovative strategies must be explored to improve the time of patient arrival to the time seen by a qualified provider in order to complete a thorough medical screening examination. One such approach is a rapid team triage system that provides a patient-centered process. This article describes the implementation of a rapid team triage model in an urban community hospital.