EmEx-Compare includes over 100 benchmarks covering all aspects of emergency room operations. Each KPI was carefully selected to be highly relevant to emergency department practice. Each are meaningful, evidence based, and lead to performance improvement opportunities. To accomplish this project, EmEx reviewed the emergency department operations literature (informative references are hyperlinked in the report) and interviewed dozens of emergency department and hospital leaders to identify and quantify best practices.

Emergency Excellence sends confidential, web-based surveys to all your key emergency department stakeholders, including:

• Emergency physicians
• Emergency nurses
• Midlevel providers (if applicable)
• Ancillary staff (including techs and clerks)
• Emergency medicine residents (if applicable)
• Key medical staff
• Key hospital administrators
• Additional stakeholders upon request (i.e. EMS, community leaders)

There is no limit to the number of individuals surveyed in the EmEx-Compare price. The survey group can be expanded or contracted to include the individuals your hospital wants surveyed.

The emergency physician and emergency nurse surveys usually take under 10 minutes to complete and the rest of the surveys take under 5 minutes to complete. Recipients receive an initial email message and two reminders (until the survey is completed). We average over a 75% completion rate with the emergency physicians and nurses. We have found that emergency department stakeholders generally offer detailed and uninhibited feedback when the survey is anonymous and sent to a third party.

Typically, several emergency department leaders spend several hours to collaboratively complete the ‘Leaders Workbook.

Emergency Excellence benchmarks against other participating emergency departments and emergency department best practices. We further categorize emergency departments based on volume, locale, and type of hospital to provide additional comparisons.

Yes. In addition to our external benchmarking results, we will also internally benchmark any group of related emergency departments.

Yes, we do. We fully guarantee your satisfaction with EmEx-Compare. We anticipate that you will find that EmEx-Compare is an exceptional value and will want to become an annual subscriber. However, if you do not value your personalized benchmarking report and agree not to use it in any manner, we will gladly refund your purchase.

Yes, it is. Emergency Excellence does not name the participating emergency department unless you agree we can do so. Of course, high performers awarded the Emergency Center of Excellence enjoy publicizing their achievement.

We do not request patient-specific data and so the HIPAA Privacy rule is not invoked.

The turnaround time from subscribing until the EmEx-Compare report is finalized typically takes several weeks. The key determinant is how fast the ‘Leaders Workbook’ is completed and the grouped email lists (for stakeholder surveys) are provided to EmEx. Once Emergency Excellence receives the necessary data, your emergency department will receive its complete EmEx-Compare report within about two weeks.

Emergency Excellence created this first national designation for superior emergency care. Top EmEx-Compare performers – the upper quintile – become eligible for the Emergency Center of Excellence designation, pending on-site verification.

A representative of EmEx visits your emergency department for an on-site assessment that takes about 6 hours to conduct. The reviewer observes your emergency department’s processes, speaks with your leaders and staff, and reviews charts and other information. A favorable review confirming the EmEx-Compare results confers the Emergency Center of Excellence designation for two years.

In the “Business Excellence” model, formal recognition programs are an important staff motivator for performance improvement (http://www.bpir.com/total-quality-management-business-excellence-models-bpir.com.html). EmEx applied this concept to emergency medicine, concentrating on customers, stakeholders, and processes. We hope that the Emergency Center of Excellence designation raises the bar for emergency room performance. Furthermore, we feel best practices should be defined by practicing doctors and nurses, not bureaucrats or regulators.

Our emergency department consultants include practicing emergency physicians and nurses with extensive emergency department practice, operations, and business backgrounds. Our strong clinical backgrounds allow us to identify issues and implement solutions better than consultants who lack practice experience.
In addition, our benchmarking process brings perspective to your emergency department’s strength and weaknesses. We encourage positive change through awareness, motivation, and team participation in problem solving.

Emergency Excellence has no duality of business interests. We do not hold a financial interest in contract management companies, coding/billing companies, or emergency department information systems. Emergency Excellence exclusively performs emergency department benchmarking and performance improvement.

EmEx-Compare provides a guide map to drive the performance improvement process. Quality and efficiency improvements come from the desire to achieve best practices in individual benchmarks and eventually to become an Emergency Center of Excellence.

We recognize that different emergency departments have different needs. Our shortest engagement, EmEx-Consult, involves an intense emergency department analysis and creation of a comprehensive Rapid Improvement Plan with many recommendations for emergency department improvement. For some emergency departments, no further assistance is needed. For others, EmEx-Transform consists of a 6 month, hands-on emergency department consulting engagement where our team works side-by-side with you to implement recommendations to transform your emergency department into a top performer. With EmEx-Optimize, our team stays engaged with your emergency department for an even longer period, monitoring performance and fine-tuning operations.

By using our service, you greatly simplify the discharge phone call process.  There is no need to purchase or design patient callback software. You will not task a busy clinical staff with a duty they generally prefer not to do. You have no hiring, training, vacation, or illness hassles required with dedicated staff.  And, no space or equipment is needed. We provide comprehensive reporting and real-time notifications, as well as the ability to benchmark your performance to other emergency departments.  Through economies of scale, we can typically provide patient callbacks at a cost lower than performing patient callbacks internally.

We provide email and/or fax notifications for patient care and patient satisfaction issues. An unlimited number of individuals can receive notifications on various issues, based on your preferences.In addition, provider-specific notifications can be delivered to physicians, nurses, midlevels, and residents for patients they have personally seen.

Our patient callback representatives are carefully selected to be patient, reliable, and possess excellent interpersonal skills. They receive HIPAA training and refreshers.

Discharge phone calls are a proven risk mitigation strategy. Self-insured groups will reduce their payouts. Some professional liability insurers and risk retention groups will offer a premium discount after you institute a patient callback program. In fact, we are happy to discuss potential liability discounts with your insurer on your behalf if requested.

Yes, we log the specific results of every discharge phone call and provide you this information on a monthly basis. This data can be useful in the future when investigating a malpractice claim or patient complaint.

Yes. We provide you with overall results, results per provider group, as well as results by individual provider. We can provide results for individual physicians, nurses, midlevels, and resident physicians.

No, there is no long-term commitment. You may start and stop service whenever you like. There are no initiation or termination fees.