Title SAFELY ENHANCING SURGICAL WARD PATIENT FLOW IN THE BED SHORTAGE ERA BY A MODIFIED “SAFER SURGERY RED2GREEN” MULTI-DISCIPLINARY BOARD ROUND. A QUALITY IMPROVEMENT RESEARCH REPORT. Roberto Valente 1,2,3 , Lorna Stanton 1 , Gregorio Santori 4 , Ajit Abraham 1 , Mohamed A Thaha 1, 5 . (1) Department of General Surgery, Royal London Hospital, Barts Health NHS Trust, Whitechapel, London E1 1BB, UK (2) Division of Surgery and Interventional Science, University College London, London, UK (3) Department of Surgery, Policlinico S. Martino, Genoa, Italy (4) Department of Surgical Sciences and Integrated Diagnostics, University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy (5) Blizard Institute, National Bowel Research Centre, Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK Roberto Valente and Mohamed A Thaha are joint senior authors Joint Corresponding Authors Roberto Valente MD, PhD, MSc, FEBS(HPB), FRCS(Eng) Division of Surgery and Interventional Science, University College London, London, UK Email: r.valente@ucl.ac.uk, roberto.valente@nhs.net Mohamed A Thaha MBBS, PhD, FRCS(Glasg), PG Cert Hlt Econ Royal London Hospital, Barts Health NHS Trust Blizard Institute, Barts and the London School of Medicine & Dentistry Queen Mary, University of London, London, UK Email: m.a.thaha@qmul.ac.uk Abstract Background Acute hospital bed shortage is a serious concern worldwide, constantly involving high-dependency units (HDU), where the non-availability of postoperative beds results in surgery cancellation. In the acute medicine context, the SAFER Red2Green initiative has shown to enhance patient flow.