Emergency Department Boarding Time Is Associated with Functional Decline in Older Adults Six Months Post Discharge.

Functional decline following hospitalization remains an important problem in health care, especially for frail older adults. Modifiable factors related to reduction in harms of hospitalization are not well described. One particularly pervasive factor is emergency department (ED) boarding time; time waiting from decision to admit, until transfer to an in-patient medical unit. We sought to investigate how the functional status of frail older …