12. Improving Patient Safety and Efficiency in ICU-GIM Transfers: Enhancing Turnaround Time (TAT) for Physician Order-Writing (Triage)

Sunnybrook is an academic health sciences centre and home to Canada’s largest trauma centre. The Level 2 Intensive Care Units (ICUs) persistent overcapacity has raised patient flow to a critical priority. Delays in transferring patients from ICU to General Internal Medicine (GIM) wards are caused by ambiguity regarding which GIM team (orange, yellow, blue, red, or silver) is responsible for order writing. GIM physicians use both electronic and paper-based orders, complicating standardization Additionally, initial data depicted that ~80% of orders were written only after bed cleaning, contributing to an average delay of 5 hours in patient transfers.