Ambulance diversion | Where ambulances are diverted to another emergency department (ED) from the one they would normally have gone to under normal circumstances |
Access block | Access to hospital beds is blocked, meaning that patients cannot be admitted to them. The term ‘exit block’ is synonymous |
Assessment unit | Typically medical, surgical, paediatric case mix. Usually run by inpatient teams as short stay assessment and treatment areas for their admitted patients |
Boarding | Patients are deemed to need admission to hospital, but there is no bed for them to be transferred to. They are said to be boarding in the ED |
Census | Head count of either number of patients presenting to an ED over a given time period (eg, annual census), or number of patients in the ED itself at a given point in time |
Left without being seen | Left without being seen (LWBS)/left without treatment (LWT)/did not wait (DNW): when patients choose to leave the ED before their care has been completed |
Occupancy | Generally taken to mean the number of occupied beds divided by the total number of beds, and expressed as a percentage. For example, hospital occupancy of 95% implies the beds have a patient in them 95% of the time |