RAG time: rapid access general surgery - a shared-care protocol to convert after-hours inpatient to daytime outpatient surgery.

A rapid access general surgery (RAG) pilot protocol was implemented at the Vernon Jubilee Hospital in January 2021 in which surgeons seeing patients in the emergency department (ED) could access operating time set aside once per week. Appropriate patients discharged from the ED were scheduled into this time, usually with a different surgeon than the initial triaging surgeon. In this article, we discuss the outcomecs of the pilot project. This innovative reorganization of existing resources converted many patients from after-hours to scheduled outpatient daytime surgery with decreased hospital bed utilization.