(COLUMBUS, Ohio) - For many of us, the story is all too familiar, you get sick or hurt and go to the emergency room for care- only to find a waiting room full of patients ahead of you. Emergency departments are busier than they've ever been since first opening some 40-years ago.* But thanks to a new approach that may be changing, one innovative emergency department is treating more patients, by being, more patient.

"We had lobbies full of patients that really were waiting 3, 4, 5 hours just to get back to be seen," says Janet Susi, RN at Ohio State University Medical Center.

But thanks to a new approach in the emergency department, doctors at Ohio State University Medical Center are clearing waiting rooms and patient cases more efficiently. The difference is an emerging area of medicine called clinical decision units, whose main role is to see one specific type of patient.

"These patients are too sick to go home, but not necessarily sick enough to be admitted into the hospital," says Mark Moseley, MD at Ohio State University Medical Center.

In the past everyone went through the same doors and the same process in the emergency department, which often created a bottle-neck for care. But with this unit, many patients are re-routed out of the emergency setting and into an evaluation area. For up to 24 hours, doctors and nurses can observe, evaluate, and treat patients who would normally tie up rooms needed for more urgent cases.

"Observation units like this will significantly decrease the number of patients that leave without being seen, it will decrease the number of hours of ambulance diversion, and then more importantly it will increase patient satisfaction," says Dr. Moseley.

It will also cut down on the number of patients who are admitted to the hospital, saving patients time and money, and the healthcare system billions of dollars a year. Clinical decision units are springing up in hospitals across the country, although the facility at Ohio State is among the largest. Doctors there take nearly 30 different types of patients into the CDU, everything from heart failure cases to psychological emergencies.

*AAEM History, American Academy of Emergency Medicine, retrieved from www.aaem.org, February2009.