For his work at Capital Health in New Jersey, William Dalsey, MD, FACEP, was named 2014 Distinguished Emergency Department Director. Blue Jay Consulting, the Emergency Medicine Foundation, and ACEP give the award each year to an outstanding emergency department director who demonstrates collaborative efforts to improve health care.

Dr. Dalsey, who oversees adult and pediatric emergency services, helped make drastic improvements to the emergency departments at Capital Health’s two sites.

One of the team’s first tasks was to reduce the left-without-treatment and left-without-being-seen rates at the urban hospital, which were hovering at 9 percent. Working with the nursing staff, they trialed a split-flow triage process for two weeks with some success. After further discussion and reviewing other options, a decision was made to implement a “pull to full” strategy.

Dr. Dalsey also has been a strong advocate for improving throughput. He has set the expectations for patient care and throughput at every aspect of the patient encounter.

In the last quarter of 2013, the combined rate was down to 3.8 percent. In December 2013 and January 2014, the combined rate was 2.5 percent.

Dr. Dalsey also has been a strong advocate for improving throughput. He has set the expectations for patient care and throughput at every aspect of the patient encounter, including door-to-provider time and outpatient turnaround times. Prior to his arrival, door-to-provider had a median time of 48 minutes at the urban hospital and 27 minutes at the suburban hospital. As a result of setting expectations and focused strategies, fourth-quarter times were 24 minutes at the urban hospital and 15 minutes at the suburban location. In their nomination letters, colleagues remarked that all of these accomplishments came within six months of Dr. Dalsey’s arrival in July 2013.

Dr. Dalsey attended the Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and completed his residency in emergency medicine at the University of Cincinnati in 1984.