173 Quantifying the Impact of Hospital Boarding on Patient Outcomes and Downstream Hospital Operations

For years, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services required public reporting of median ED boarding times, however this measure was retired in 2021 based upon the mixed results of a systematic review of ED boarding upon patient outcomes that included many studies with small sample size or limited measurement of outcomes. Moreover, these studies did not address that boarding time is endogenous, which can lead to a biased estimation. Our objective was to examine the bias-corrected association between boarding and common hospital quality outcomes.