Reduced Functional Bed Capacity Due to Inpatient Boarding Is Associated with Increased Rates of Left Without Being Seen in the Emergency Department

Functional bed capacity is a new and pragmatic operational metric strongly associated with left-without-being-seen rates and provides an improved way to measure, study, and communicate the impact of inpatient boarding. We propose using functional bed capacity as a metric in future studies of ED operations. Additional studies that incorporate staffing levels to more accurately approximate functional bed capacity and better characterize its true impact on LWBS rates are needed.