Addressing Boarding and Crowding in the Emergency Department

Improved Hospital Tracking: Grants can be used to develop real-time systems to track hospital bed capacity, emergency department boarding rates, treatment wait times, and how long emergency medical services personnel wait to offload patients (Section 2).

Public Transparency: The bill allows for a public-facing dashboard that provides information on tracked hospital capacity, provided it follows privacy laws (Section 2).

Enhanced Care for Older Adults: The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation will include models to improve emergency care for older adults through better staffing, infrastructure changes, geriatric-focused policies, and better coordination with post-acute care facilities (Section 3).

Improved Care for Psychiatric Crises: New models will promote better care for individuals in acute psychiatric crisis by implementing dedicated emergency department units and improving transfers to post-acute care facilities (Section 3).

Data System Optimization: A study will be conducted to determine the best ways to track capacity across various facilities—including intensive care units and skilled nursing facilities—and ensure these systems integrate with hospital electronic medical records (Section 4).