Decreasing non-value-added nursing time transporting stable patients from the emergency department

In the emergency department (ED), one non-value-added task is transporting stable patients to telemetry units. This process improvement intervention introduces a decision tree to determine which patients are stable enough to be safely transported nonmonitored, thus more efficiently using valuable nursing time. A decision tree was utilized to determine which patients would be transported nonmonitored. A data collection instrument was completed at the time of each nonmonitored transport of a patient, and data were collected over a 4-month period. A total of 280 patients met the criteria to be transported nonmonitored from the ED to the inpatient unit during the data collection period, saving an average of 20.7 hr per month. With appropriate use of the decision tree, clinical staff successfully determined the need for monitored transport of patients admitted to non-intensive care unit telemetry units from the ED. There were no adverse patient events.