Good discharge management is vital to ensure patient satisfaction, as well as bed availability for emergency and elective admissions. A lengthy, inefficient process for discharging patients is a common concern for hospitals. We chose to use the latter approach in tackling the patient discharge process. Another strategy, which offers the potential for greater return on investment, is process improvement. One strategy hospitals have used to combat overcrowding is investing in new construction and additional staffing. The lack of inpatient beds is the most significant reason for ED overcrowding. The main causes of ED overcrowding seem to originate outside the ED patients are held in the emergency department after they have been admitted to the hospital because no inpatient beds are available. ED overcrowding has been reported to cause delays in diagnosis, delays in treatment, decreased quality of care, and poor patient outcomes. Overcrowding in emergency departments (ED) is a problem in many countries around the world. Cultivating the necessary ownership through stakeholder analysis is an essential ingredient of sustainable improvement efforts. Simplified and standardized processes, improved communications, and system-wide management are among the proposed improvements, which reduced patient discharge time by 54% from 216 minutes. Discrete event simulation was utilized as a decision support tool to test the effect of the improvements under different scenarios. Categorizing patients by their needs enabled better design of the discharge processes. Fragmented and unstandardized processes and procedures and a lack of communication among the stakeholders were among the leading causes of long discharge times. These data were analyzed using detailed process maps and cause-and-effect diagrams. Data on the duration of all activities, from the physician signing the discharge form to the patient leaving the treatment room, were collected through patient shadowing. In this study, the Six Sigma process improvement methodology was applied to reduce patients’ discharge time in a cancer treatment hospital. Short discharge time from hospitals increases both bed availability and patients’ and families’ satisfaction.
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