Hospitals ease ER crowding with ward beds in halls

news.yahoo.com — There's no phone and no television. Only a screen offers privacy. But heart patient Edward Gray understands why the hospital put him in a cardiac unit hallway. "They sent me up here to make room for other emergency patients," Gray, 78, said last week from his bed in the hall of a New York area hospital. "This is the way things are in hospitals." It may not sound like ideal health care, but hospital officials nationwide are being urged to consider hallway medicine as a way to ease emergency department crowding, and some are trying it. Leading the way is Stony Brook University Medical Center at Stony Brook, N.Y., where a study found that no harm was caused by moving emergency room patients to upper-floor hallways when they were ready for admission.

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