To: Hospital CEO

From: CC: Chief of the Medical Staff

Date: Subject: Overcrowding at the Emergency Department

The aspect of spending $6 million to build a 10-bed addition in the hospitals emergency department will not help in amicably addressing the problem of overcrowding that has plagued the hospital for the last five years. It is important to identify the root causes of the matter and come up with a comprehensive mechanism that would effectively solve the matter.

The main root cause of congestion in the crisis section includes the degradation of the quality of care that is provided in the hospital. This includes delays to not only diagnose but also treat the patients. It also involves prolonged waiting times besides delays in the treatment of the seriously ill patients. Another cause of the problem is increased costs which lead to the existence of unnecessary diagnostic investigations. When there is dissatisfaction on the side of the patients with the services that they obtain from the hospital then this can also lead to overcrowding (Hussein, Abdelmaguid, Tawfik, & Ahmed, 2017). Another cause of the problem is the growing population with the non-urgent complaints in the emergency departments. Other major causes of the problem in the hospital include the prolonged length of stays at the emergency department by patients, inadequate healthcare personnel who attend to the needs of the patients, and the delayed response to provide the emergency department consultations. Other causes include repeated emergency department visits that are at times inappropriately used. The hospital-specific factors such as the deficiency of available inpatient cribs are not the major cause of overcapacity in the hospital (Yarmohammadian, Rezaei, Haghshenas, & Tavakoli, 2017). It is for this purpose as to why the money set aside to increase the number of beds in the facility needs to be properly utilized in comprehensively addressing the aforementioned root-causes of the problem so as to find long-term solutions to the problem.