This customizable document, Managing Patient Flow, is taken from MCN Healthcare’s Leadership Manual. For more than 20 years, MCN has been the health care industry’s leading provider of policy and procedure templates, forms, competencies and other compliance tools.

MCN provides more than 80 health care specific policy and procedure manuals for Acute Care Hospitals, Ambulatory Care, Behavioral Health, Home Health, Physician Practice, and Long Term Care. MCN’s policy and procedure manuals focus on the latest healthcare "hot topic" issues related to patient safety and prevention of medical healthcare errors.

Here is some sample content from Managing Patient Flow:

	POLICY: Hospital recognizes that managing the flow of patients throughout the organization is essential to preventing and mitigating patient crowding, which can create lapses in patient quality and patient care. Hospital recognizes that overcrowding is a systemwide problem, and not one that is limited to the Emergency Department. Hospital is committed to assessing and planning for effective and efficient patient flow throughout the hospital. PROCEDURE: The Patient Flow Management Team shall be comprised of representatives from: Hospital leadership Nurse Executive Director of Bed...
Second excerpt:
	...Assess patient flow issues throughout the hospital, identifying impact on patient safety and identifying and implementing processes to mitigate any potentially adverse impact. Specific areas that shall be reviewed include: Patients for whom no decision to admit has been made, but who are placed in holding areas for observation Processes for ambulance diversions including the development of criteria to guide decisions about initiating diversion Temporary bed locations such as the...