Emergency department metrics vs. reality: Why the numbers lie
The emergency department didn’t suddenly get worse.
The numbers did.
Every shift, emergency clinicians are measured by dashboards that insist on telling a familiar story: Door-to-provider times are too long, length of stay is unacceptable, left-without-being-seen rates are creeping up. The implication is clear. We’re slow. We’re inefficient. We’re failing.
But those numbers are no longer describing clinical performance. They’re describing system saturation.
Emergency departments today operate in conditions that were once considered temporary …
