The effect of emergency department crowding on clinically oriented outcomes

Real-time forecasting of emergency department arrivals using prehospital data

Background

Crowding in emergency departments (EDs) is a challenge globally. To counteract crowding in day-to-day operations, better tools to improve monitoring of the patient flow in the ED is needed. The objective of this study was the development of a continuously updated monitoring system to forecast emergency department (ED) arrivals on a short time-horizon incorporating data from prehospital services.

Methods

Time of notification and ED arrival was obtained for all 191,939 arrivals at the ED of a Norwegian university hospital from 2010 to 2018. An arrival notification was an automatically captured time stamp which indicated the first time the ED was notified of an arriving patient, typically by a call from an ambulance to the emergency service communication center. A Poisson time-series regression model for forecasting the number of arrivals on a 1-, 2- and 3-h horizon with continuous weekly and yearly cyclic effects was implemented. We incorporated time of arrival notification by modelling time to arrival as a time varying hazard function. We validated the model on the last full year of data.

Results

In our data, 20% of the arrivals had been notified more than 1 hour prior to arrival. By incorporating time of notification into the forecasting model, we saw a substantial improvement in forecasting accuracy, especially on a one-hour horizon. In terms of mean absolute prediction error, we observed around a six percentage-point decrease compared to a simplified prediction model. The increase in accuracy was particularly large for periods with large inflow.

Conclusions

The proposed model shows increased predictability in ED patient inflow when incorporating data on patient notifications. This approach to forecasting arrivals can be a valuable tool for logistic, decision making and ED resource management.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (10.1186/s12873-019-0256-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Emergency department visits by patients with an internal medicine specialist: understanding the role of specialists in reducing ED crowding

As emergency department (ED) crowding continues to worsen, many visits are at academic referral hospitals. As a result, engaging specialty services will be essential to decompressing the ED. To do this, it will be important to understand which specialties to focus interventions on for the greatest impact. To characterize the ED utilization of non-surgical adult patients with an ambulatory specialist who were seen and discharged from the ED. Retrospective cohort study of all consecutive patients currently under the care from a specialist presenting to an urban, university affiliated hospital between 01 January 2015 and 31 December 2016. The identification of ED visits attributable to specialists was based on the primary diagnosis of ED visits and the frequency of visit with specialists within a given timeframe. Only patients who were discharged directly from the ED were included in the analysis. There were 29,853 ED visits by patients currently under the care of a specialist during the study period. 17.76% of these visits were related to the medical specialty of the specialist. Of these visits, 41.73% occurred during office hours, and 24.81% occurred during weekends. The specialties with the largest proportion of ED visits related to their specialty was cardiology, gastroenterology, and pulmonary, respectively. Nearly 18% of all patients that have a specialist and are treated and discharged from the ED present with a diagnosis related to their specialist's practice. This may indicate that there is a role for specialty service to play in decreasing some ED utilization that may be appropriate for the out-patient clinical setting. By focusing attention on specific specialties and interventions targeted during office hours, there may be an opportunity to decrease ED utilization.

Triaging the triage: reducing waiting time to triage in the emergency department at a tertiary care hospital in New Delhi, India

BACKGROUND

Prolonged wait times prior to triage outside the emergency department (ED) were a major problem at our institution, compromising patient safety. Patients often waited for hours outside the ED in hot weather leading to exhaustion and clinical deterioration. The aim was to decrease the median waiting time to triage from 50 min outside ED for patients to <30 min over a 4-month period.

METHODS

A quality improvement (QI) team was formed. Data on waiting time to triage were collected between 12 pm and 1 pm. Data were collected by hospital attendants and recorded manually. T1 was noted as a time of arrival outside the ED, and T2 was noted as the time of first medical contact. The QI team used plan-do-study-act cycles to test solutions. Change ideas to address these gaps were tested during May and June 2018. Change ideas were focused on improving the knowledge and skills of staff posted in triage and reducing turnover of triage staff. Data were analysed using run chart rules.

RESULTS

Within 6 weeks, the waiting time to triage reduced to <30 min (median, 12 min; IQR, 11 min) and this improvement was sustained for the next 8 weeks despite an increase in patient load.

CONCLUSION

The authors demonstrated that people new to QI could use improvement methods to address a specific problem. It was the commitment of the frontline staff, with the active support of senior leadership in the department that helped this effort succeed.

Are service and patient indicators different in the presence or absence of nurse practitioners? The EDPRAC cohort study of Australian emergency departments

OBJECTIVES

To evaluate the impact of nurse practitioner (NP) service in Australian public hospital emergency departments (EDs) on service and patient safety and quality indicators.

DESIGN AND SETTING

Cohort study comprising ED presentations (July 2013-June 2014) for a random sample of hospitals, stratified by state/territory and metropolitan versus non-metropolitan location; and a retrospective medical record audit of ED re-presentations.

METHODS

Service indicator data (patient waiting times for Australasian Triage Scale categories 2, 3, 4 and 5; number of patients who did not-wait; length of ED stay for non-admitted patients) were compared between EDs with and without NPs using logistic regression and Cox proportional hazards regression, adjusting for hospital and patient characteristics and correlation of outcomes within hospitals. Safety and quality indicator data (rates of ED unplanned re-presentations) for a random subset of re-presentations were compared using Poisson regression.

RESULTS

Of 66 EDs, 55 (83%) provided service indicator data on 2 463 543 ED patient episodes while 58 (88%) provided safety and quality indicator data on 2853 ED re-presentations. EDs with NPs had significantly (p<0.001) higher rates of waiting times compared with EDs without NPs. Patients presenting to EDs with NPs spent 13 min (8%) longer in ED compared with EDs without NPs (median, (first quartile-third quartile): 156 (93-233) and 143 (84-217) for EDs with and without NPs, respectively). EDs with NPs had 1.8% more patients who did not wait, but similar re-presentations rates as EDs with NPs.

CONCLUSIONS

EDs with NPs had statistically significantly lower performance for service indicators. However, these findings should be treated with caution. NPs are relatively new in the ED workforce and low NP numbers, staffing patterns and still-evolving roles may limit their impact on service indicators. Further research is needed to explain the dichotomy between the benefits of NPs demonstrated in individual clinical outcomes research and these macro system-wide observations.

Strengths and weaknesses of the acute care systems in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands: what can we learn from each other?

Background

The demand on Emergency Departments and acute medical services is increasing internationally, creating pressure on health systems and negatively influencing the quality of delivered care. Visible consequences of the increased demand on acute services is crowding and queuing. This manifests as delays in the Emergency Departments, adverse clinical outcomes and poor patient experience.

Overview

Despite the similarities in the UK’s and Dutch health care systems, such as universal health coverage, there are differences in the number of patients presenting at the Emergency Departments and the burden of crowding between these countries. Given the similarities in funding, this paper explores the similarities and differences in the organisational structure of acute care in the UK and the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, less patients are seen at the ED than in England and the admission rate is higher. GPs and so-called GP-posts serve 24/7 as gatekeepers in acute care, but EDs are heterogeneously organised. In the UK, the acute care system has a number of different access points and the accessibility of GPs seems to be suboptimal. Acute ambulatory care may relieve the pressure from EDs and Acute Medical Units. In both countries the ageing population leads to a changing case mix at the ED with an increased amount of multimorbid patients with polypharmacy, requiring generalistic and multidisciplinary care.

Conclusion

The acute and emergency care in the Netherlands and the UK face similar challenges. We believe that each system has strengths that the other can learn from. The Netherlands may benefit from an acute ambulatory care system and the UK by optimizing the accessibility of GPs 24/7 and improving signposting for urgent care services. In both countries the changing case mix at the ED needs doctors who are superspecialists instead of subspecialists. Finally, to improve the organisation of health care, doctors need to be visible medical leaders and participate in the organisation of care.

Decreasing the Lag Between Result Availability and Decision-Making in the Emergency Department Using Push Notifications

Introduction

Emergency department (ED) patient care often hinges on the result of a diagnostic test. Frequently there is a lag time between a test result becoming available for review and physician decision-making or disposition based on that result. We implemented a system that electronically alerts ED providers when test results are available for review via a smartphone- and smartwatch-push notification. We hypothesized this would reduce the time from result to clinical decision-making.

Methods

We retrospectively assessed the impact of the implementation of a push notification system at three EDs on time-to-disposition or time-to-follow-up order in six clinical scenarios of interest: chest radiograph (CXR) to disposition, basic metabolic panel (BMP) to disposition, urinalysis (UA) to disposition, respiratory pathogen panel (RPP) to disposition, hemoglobin (Hb) to blood transfusion order, and abnormal D-dimer to computed tomography pulmonary angiography (CTPA) order. All ED patients during a one-year period of push-notification availability were included in the study. The primary outcome was median time in each scenario from result availability to either disposition order or defined follow-up order. The secondary outcome was the overall usage rate of the opt-in push notification system by providers.

Results

During the study period there were 6115 push notifications from 4183 ED encounters (2.7% of all encounters). Of the six clinical scenarios examined in this study, five were associated with a decrease in median time from test result availability to patient disposition or follow-up order when push notifications were employed: CXR to disposition, 80 minutes (interquartile range [IQR] 32–162 minutes) vs 56 minutes (IQR 18–141 minutes), difference 24 minutes (p<0.01); BMP to disposition, 128 minutes (IQR 62–225 minutes) vs 116 minutes (IQR 33–226 minutes), difference 12 minutes (p<0.01); UA to disposition, 105 minutes (IQR 43–200 minutes) vs 55 minutes (IQR 16–144 minutes), difference 50 minutes (p<0.01); RPP to disposition, 80 minutes (IQR 28–181 minutes) vs 37 minutes (IQR 10–116 minutes), difference 43 minutes (p<0.01); and D-dimer to CTPA, 14 minutes (IQR 6–30 minutes) vs 6 minutes (IQR 2.5–17.5 minutes), difference 8 minutes (p<0.01). The sixth scenario, Hb to blood transfusion (difference 19 minutes, p=0.73), did not meet statistical significance.

Conclusion

Implementation of a push notification system for test result availability in the ED was associated with a decrease in lag time between test result and physician decision-making in the examined clinical scenarios. Push notifications were used in only a minority of ED patient encounters.

Parallel Simulation Decision-Making Method for a Response to Unconventional Public Health Emergencies Based on the Scenario–Response Paradigm and Discrete Event System Theory

Given the non-repeatability, complexity, and unpredictability of unconventional public health emergencies, building accurate models and making effective response decisions based only on traditional prediction–response decision-making methods are difficult. To solve this problem, under the scenario–response paradigm and theories on parallel emergency management and discrete event system (DES), the parallel simulation decision-making framework (PSDF), which includes the methods of abstract modeling, simulation operation, decision-making optimization, and parallel control, is proposed for unconventional public health emergency response processes. Furthermore, with the example of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) response process, the evolutionary scenarios that include infected patients and diagnostic processes are transformed into simulation processes. Then, the validity and operability of the DES–PSDF method proposed in this paper are verified by the results of a simulation experiment. The results demonstrated that, in the case of insufficient prior knowledge, effective parallel simulation models can be constructed and improved dynamically by multi-stage parallel controlling. Public health system bottlenecks and relevant effective response solutions can also be obtained by iterative simulation and optimizing decisions. To meet the urgent requirements of emergency response, the DES–PSDF method introduces a new response decision-making concept for unconventional public health emergencies.

Interprofessional teamwork versus fast track streaming in an emergency department-An observational cohort study of two strategies for enhancing the throughput of orthopedic patients presenting limb injuries or back pain

Objective

To compare two strategies, interprofessional teams versus fast track streaming, for orthopedic patients with limb injuries or back pain, the most frequent orthopedic complaints in an emergency department.

Methods

An observational before-and-after study at an adult emergency department from May 2012 to Nov 2015. Patients who arrived on weekdays from 8 am to 9 pm and presented limb injury or back pain during one year of each process were included, so that 11,573 orthopedic presentations were included in the fast track period and 10,978 in the teamwork period. Similarly, another 11,020 and 10,760 arrivals presenting the six most frequent non-orthopedic complaints were included in the respective periods, altogether 44,331 arrivals. The outcome measures were the time to physician (TTP) and length of stay (LOS). The LOS was adjusted for predictors, including imaging times, by using linear regression analysis.

Results

The overall median TTP was shorter in the teamwork period, 76.3 min versus 121.0 min in the fast track period (-44.7 min, 95% confidence interval (CI): -47.3 to -42.6). The crude median LOS for orthopedic presentations was also shorter in the teamwork period, 217.0 min versus 230.0 min (-13.0 min, 95% CI: -18.0 to -8.0), and the adjusted LOS was 22.8 min shorter (95% CI: -26.9 to -18.7). For non-orthopedic presentations, the crude median LOS did not differ significantly between the periods (2.0 min, 95% CI: -3.0 to 7.0). However, the adjusted LOS was shorter in the teamwork period (-20.1 min, 95% CI: -24.6 to -15.7).

Conclusions

The median TTP and LOS for orthopedic presentations were shorter in the teamwork period. For non-orthopedic presentations, the TTP and adjusted LOS were also shorter in the teamwork period. Therefore, interprofessional teamwork may be an alternative approach to improve the patient flow in emergency departments.

Emergency department and hospital crowding: causes, consequences, and cures

Overcrowding with associated delays in patient care is a problem faced by emergency departments (EDs) worldwide. ED overcrowding can be the result of poor ED department design and prolonged throughput due to staffing, ancillary service performance, and flow processes. As such, the problem may be addressed by process improvements within the ED. A broad body of literature demonstrates that ED overcrowding can be a function of hospital capacity rather than an ED specific issue. Lack of institutional capacity leads to boarding in the ED with resultant ED crowding. This is a problem not solvable by the ED and must be addressed as an institution-wide problem. This paper discusses the causes of ED overcrowding, provides a brief overview of the drastic consequences, and discusses possible cures that have been successfully implemented.

Planning Capacity for Mental Health and Addiction Services in the Emergency Department: A Discrete-Event Simulation Approach

Ontario has shown an increasing number of emergency department (ED) visits, particularly for mental health and addiction (MHA) complaints. Given the current opioid crises Canada is facing and the legalization of recreational cannabis in October 2018, the number of MHA visits to the ED is expected to grow even further. In face of these events, we examine capacity planning alternatives for the ED of an academic hospital in Toronto. We first quantify the volume of ED visits the hospital has received in recent years (from 2012 to 2016) and use forecasting techniques to predict future ED demand for the hospital. We then employ a discrete-event simulation model to analyze the impacts of the following scenarios: (a) increasing overall demand to the ED, (b) increasing or decreasing number of ED visits due to substance abuse, and (c) adjusting resource capacity to address the forecasted demand. Key performance indicators used in this analysis are the overall ED length of stay (LOS) and the total number of patients treated in the Psychiatric Emergency Services Unit (PESU) as a percentage of the total number of MHA visits. Our results showed that if resource capacity is not adjusted, ED LOS will deteriorate considerably given the expected growth in demand; programs that aim to reduce the number of alcohol and/or opioid visits can greatly aid in reducing ED wait times; the legalization of recreational use of cannabis will have minimal impact, and increasing the number of PESU beds can provide great aid in reducing ED pressure.

Sparse Embedding for Interpretable Hospital Admission Prediction

This paper introduces a sparse embedding for electronic health record (EHR) data in order to predict hospital admission. We use a k-sparse autoencoder to embed the original registry data into a much lower dimension, with sparsity as a goal. Then, t-SNE is used to show the embedding of each patient's data in a 2D plot. We then demonstrate the predictive accuracy in different existing machine learning algorithms. Our sparse embedding performs competitively against the original data and traditional embedding vectors with an AUROC of 0.878. In addition, we demonstrate the expressive power of our sparse embedding, i.e. interpretability. Sparse embedding can discover more phenotypes in t-SNE visualization than original data or traditional embedding. The discovered phenotypes can be regarded as different risk groups, through which we can study the driving risk factors for each patient phenotype.

Impact of the implementation of a fast-track on emergency department length of stay and quality of care indicators in the Champagne-Ardenne region: a before-after study

OBJECTIVES

We aimed to evaluate the effect of the implementation of a fast-track on emergency department (ED) length of stay (LOS) and quality of care indicators.

DESIGN

Adjusted before-after analysis.

SETTING

A large hospital in the Champagne-Ardenne region, France.

PARTICIPANTS

Patients admitted to the ED between 13 January 2015 and 13 January 2017.

INTERVENTION

Implementation of a fast-track for patients with small injuries or benign medical conditions (13 January 2016).

PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OUTCOME MEASURES

Proportion of patients with LOS ≥4 hours and proportion of access block situations (when patients cannot access an appropriate hospital bed within 8 hours). 7-day readmissions and 30-day readmissions.

RESULTS

The ED of the intervention hospital registered 53 768 stays in 2016 and 57 965 in 2017 (+7.8%). In the intervention hospital, the median LOS was 215 min before the intervention and 186 min after the intervention. The exponentiated before-after estimator for ED LOS ≥4 hours was 0.79; 95% CI 0.77 to 0.81. The exponentiated before-after estimator for access block was 1.19; 95% CI 1.13 to 1.25. There was an increase in the proportion of 30 day readmissions in the intervention hospital (from 11.4% to 12.3%). After the intervention, the proportion of patients leaving without being seen by a physician decreased from 10.0% to 5.4%.

CONCLUSIONS

The implementation of a fast-track was associated with a decrease in stays lasting ≥4 hours without a decrease in access block. Further studies are needed to evaluate the causes of variability in ED LOS and their connections to quality of care indicators.

Examining emergency department inequities: Do they exist?

OBJECTIVES

Ethnic inequities in health outcomes have been well documented with Indigenous peoples experiencing a high level of healthcare need, yet low access to, and through, high-quality healthcare services. Despite Māori having a high ED use, few studies have explored the potential for ethnic inequities in emergency care within New Zealand (NZ). Healthcare delivery within an ED context is characterised by time-pressured, relatively brief, complex and demanding environments. When clinical decision-making occurs in this context, provider prejudice, stereotyping and bias are more likely. The examining emergency department inequities (EEDI) research project aims to investigate whether clinically important ethnic inequities between Māori and non-Māori exist.

METHODS

EEDI is a retrospective observational study examining ED admissions in NZ between 2006 and 2012 (5 976 126 ED events). EEDI has been designed from a Kaupapa Māori Research position.

RESULTS

The primary data source is the existing Shorter Stays in Emergency Department National Research Project (SSED) dataset that will be combined with clinical information extracted from NZ's National Minimum Dataset. The key predictor variable is patient ethnicity with other covariates including: sex, age-group, area deprivation, mode of presentation, referral method, Australasian Triage Scale and the Multimorbidity Measure (M3 Index) for co-morbidities. Generalised linear regression models will be used to investigate the associations between pre-admission variables and the measures of ED care, and to examine the contribution of each measure of ED care on ethnic inequities in mortality.

CONCLUSION

The present study will provide the largest, most comprehensive investigation of ED outcomes by ethnicity to date in NZ.

Patient safety and quality outcomes for ED patients admitted to alternative care area inpatient beds

BACKGROUND

Inpatient hallway beds are one solution to mitigate emergency department (ED) crowding due to boarding of admitted patients. Alternative Care Areas (AltCA) beds are located in inpatient hallways, cardiac catheterization lab, and endoscopy. We examined whether AltCA beds were associated with increased risk of patient safety and quality outcomes: transfer to Intensive Care Unit (ICU), mortality, hospital-acquired infections (HAI), falls, and 72-hour hospital readmission.

METHODS

Retrospective cohort study of patients age >18 years admitted from the ED to non-ICU beds at an urban, academic hospital. AltCA bed exclusion criteria: dementia, frequent respiratory interventions, contact or airborne isolation, psychiatric admission, and inability to ambulate. The study periods were: pre-intervention 9/1/2014-3/31/2015, transition 9/1/2015-3/31/2016, and post-intervention 9/1/2016-3/31/2017. Data analysis used unadjusted and multivariable analyses which controlled for age, sex, race, ethnicity, insurance, ED triage Emergency Service Index (ESI) level, and telemetry order.

RESULTS

The study included 16,801 patients, with 622 (3.7%) patients in AltCA beds. AltCA beds had younger patients than standard inpatient beds, 57.7 years and 61.7 years; fewer telemetry order, 48.4% and 59.3%; and fewer ESI level 2, 16.1% and 26.2%. AltCA beds had shorter hospital LOS than standard inpatient beds, 2.7 days and 3.4 days. AltCA beds had decreased risk of transfer to ICU -10.6 (95%CI: -18.3, -2.8) and HAI -13.4 (95%CI: -20.3, -6.5) compared to standard inpatient beds.

CONCLUSION

Patients in AltCA beds did not have increased risk of patient safety and quality outcomes but rather decreased risk of transfer to ICU and HAI than standard inpatient beds.

Over-triage occurs when considering the patient's pain in Korean Triage and Acuity Scale (KTAS)

Background

The Korean Triage and Acuity Scale (KTAS) was developed based on the Canadian Emergency Department Triage and Acuity Scale. In patients with pain, to determine the KTAS level, the pain scale is considered; however, since the degree of pain is subjective, this may affect the accuracy of KTAS. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the accuracy of KTAS in predicting patient's severity with the degree of pain used as a modifier.

Method

A retrospective observational cohort study was conducted in an urban tertiary hospital emergency department (ED). We investigated patients over 16 years old from January to June 2016. The patients were divided into the pain and non-pain groups according to whether the degree of pain was used as a modifier or not. We compared the predictive power of KTAS on the urgency of patients between the two groups. Acute area registration in the ED, emergency procedure, emergency operation, hospitalization, intensive care unit admission, and 7-day mortality were used as markers to determine urgent patients.

Results

Overall, 24,253 patients were included in the study, with 9,175 (37.8%) in the pain group. The proportions of patients with KTAS 1–3 were 61.4% in the pain and 75.6% in the non-pain groups. Among patients with KTAS 2–3, the proportion of urgent patients was higher in the non-pain group than the pain group (p<0.001). The odds ratios for urgent patients at each KTAS level revealed a more evident discriminatory power of KTAS for urgent patients in the non-pain group. The predictability of KTAS for urgent patients was higher in the non-pain group than the pain group (area under the curve; 0.736 vs. 0.765, p-value <0.001).

Conclusions

Considering the degree of pain with KTAS led to overestimation of patient severity and had a negative impact on the predictability of KTAS for urgent patients.

Use of Telemedicine to Screen Patients in the Emergency Department: Matched Cohort Study Evaluating Efficiency and Patient Safety of Telemedicine

BACKGROUND

Early efforts to incorporate telemedicine into Emergency Medicine focused on connecting remote treatment clinics to larger emergency departments (EDs) and providing remote consultation services to EDs with limited resources. Owing to continued ED overcrowding, some EDs have used telemedicine to increase the number of providers during surges of patient visits and offer scheduled "home" face-to-face, on-screen encounters. In this study, we used remote on-screen telemedicine providers in the "screening-in-triage" role.

OBJECTIVE

This study aimed to compare the efficiency and patient safety of in-person screening and telescreening.

METHODS

This cohort study, matched for days and proximate hours, compared the performance of real-time remote telescreening and in-person screening at a single urban academic ED over 22 weeks in the spring and summer of 2016. The study involved 337 standard screening hours and 315 telescreening hours. The primary outcome measure was patients screened per hour. Additional outcomes were rates of patients who left without being seen, rates of analgesia ordered by the screener, and proportion of patients with chest pain receiving or prescribed a standard set of tests and medications.

RESULTS

In-person screeners evaluated 1933 patients over 337 hours (5.7 patients per hour), whereas telescreeners evaluated 1497 patients over 315 hours (4.9 patients per hour; difference=0.8; 95% CI 0.5-1.2). Split analysis revealed that for the final 3 weeks of the evaluation, the patient-per-hour rate differential was neither clinically relevant nor statistically discernable (difference=0.2; 95% CI -0.7 to 1.2). There were fewer patients who left without being seen during in-person screening than during telescreening (2.6% vs 3.8%; difference=-1.2; 95% CI -2.4 to 0.0). However, compared to prior year-, date-, and time-matched data on weekdays from 1 am to 3 am, a period previously void of provider screening, telescreening decreased the rate of patients LWBS from 25.1% to 4.5% (difference=20.7%; 95% CI 10.1-31.2). Analgesia was ordered more frequently by telescreeners than by in-person screeners (51.2% vs 31.6%; difference=19.6%; 95% CI 12.1-27.1). There was no difference in standard care received by patients with chest pain between telescreening and in-person screening (29.4% vs 22.4%; difference=7.0%; 95% CI -3.4 to 17.4).

CONCLUSIONS

Although the efficiency of telescreening, as measured by the rate of patients seen per hour, was lower early in the study period, telescreening achieved the same level of efficiency as in-person screening by the end of the pilot study. Adding telescreening during 1-3 am on weekdays dramatically decreased the number of patients who left without being seen compared to historic data. Telescreening was an effective and safe way for this ED to expand the hours in which patients were screened by a health care provider in triage.

How to decide adequately? Qualitative study of GPs' view on decision-making in self-referred and physician-referred emergency department consultations in Berlin, Germany

OBJECTIVES

Patients with acute symptoms present not only to general practitioners (GPs), but also frequently to emergency departments (EDs). Patients' decision processes leading up to an ED self-referral are complex and supposed to result from a multitude of determinants. While they are key providers in primary care, little is known about GPs' perception of such patients. This qualitative study explores the GPs' view regarding motives and competences of patients self-referring to EDs, and also GPs' rationale for or against physician-initiated ED referrals.

DESIGN

Qualitative study with semi-structured, face-to-face interviews; qualitative content analysis.

SETTING

GP practices in Berlin, Germany.

PARTICIPANTS

15 GPs (female/male: 9/6; mean age 53.6 years).

RESULTS

The interviewed GPs related a wide spectrum of factors potentially influencing their patients' decision to visit an ED, and also their own decision-making in potential referrals. Considerations go beyond medical urgency. Statements concerning patients' surmised rationale corresponded to GPs' reasoning in a variety of important areas. For one thing, the timely availability of an extended spectrum of diagnostic and therapeutic options may make ED services attractive to both. Access difficulties in the ambulatory setting were mentioned as additional triggers for an ED visit initiated by a patient or a GP. Key patient factors like severity of symptoms and anxiety also play a major role; a desire for reassurance may lead to both self-referred and physician-initiated ED visits. Patients' health competence was prevailingly depicted as limited, with the internet as an important influencing factor. Counselling efforts by GP were described as crucial for improving health literacy.

CONCLUSIONS

Health education could hold promise when aiming to reduce non-urgent ED consultations. Primary care providers are in a key position here. Amelioration of organisational shortages in ambulatory care, for example, limited consultation hours, might also make an important impact, as these trigger both self-referrals and GP-initiated ED referrals.

TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER

DRKS00011930.

Crowding in the emergency department in the absence of boarding - a transition regression model to predict departures and waiting time

Background

Crowding in the emergency department (ED) is associated with increased mortality, increased treatment cost, and reduced quality of care. Crowding arises when demand exceed resources in the ED and a first sign may be increasing waiting time. We aimed to quantify predictors for departure from the ED, and relate this to waiting time in the ED before departure.

Methods

We utilised administrative data from the ED and calculated number of arrivals, departures, and the resulting queue in 30 min time steps for all of 2013 (N = 17,520). We build a transition model for each time step using the number of past departures and pre-specified risk factors (arrivals, weekday/weekend and shift) to predict the expected number of departures and from this the expected waiting time in the ED. The model was validated with data from the same ED collected March through August 2014.

Results

We found that the number of arrivals had the greatest independent impact on departures with an odds ratio of 0.942 (95%CI: 0.937;0.948) corresponding to additional 7 min waiting time per new arrival in a 30 min time interval with an a priori time spend in the ED of two hours. The serial correlation of departures was present up to one and a half hour previous but had very little effect on the estimates of the risk factors. Boarding played a negligible role in the studied ED.

Conclusions

We present a transition regression model with high predictive power to predict departures from the ED utilising only system level data. We use this to present estimates of expected waiting time and ultimately crowding in the ED. The model shows good internal validity though further studies are needed to determine generalisability to the performance in other settings.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (10.1186/s12874-019-0710-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Point of care ultrasound is associated with decreased ED length of stay for symptomatic early pregnancy

INTRODUCTION

Emergency physicians (EP) can accurately rule out ectopic pregnancy with pelvic point of care ultrasound (PPOCUS). Multiple studies have suggested that PPOCUS may decrease length of stay (LOS) for emergency department (ED) patients presenting with early symptomatic pregnancy compared to comprehensive ultrasound (CUS). This systematic review and meta-analysis examines the association between the use of PPOCUS vs CUS and ED LOS.

METHODS

A systematic review of the literature was performed. Patients with symptomatic early pregnancy receiving EP-performed PPOCUS were compared to patients receiving CUS without PPOCUS. Keywords and search terms were generated for PPOCUS, ED LOS and CUS. Two independent reviewers screened abstracts for inclusion. A third reviewer was used when conflicts arose to gain consensus. Formal bias assessment was performed on included studies. Meta-analysis was carried out, pooling the mean differences between studies using a random-effects model.

RESULTS

2980 initial articles were screened, 32 articles underwent detailed review, 8 underwent bias assessment, and 6 were included in the final meta-analysis. There were 836 patients in the study group and 1514 in the control group. All studies showed a decreased LOS in the PPOCUS group with a mean decrease of 73.8 min (95% CI 49.1, 98.6). Two studies not included in the meta-analysis also showed significantly decreased LOS with PPOCUS.

CONCLUSION

Use of PPOCUS in the evaluation of patients with symptomatic early pregnancy is associated with decreased LOS in patients ultimately diagnosed with intrauterine pregnancy. This review suggests that this finding is generalizable to a variety of practice settings.

Effects of Real-time EMS Direction on Optimizing EMS Turnaround and Load-balancing Between Neighboring Hospital Campuses

Background: Implemented in September 2017, the "nurse navigator program" identified the preferred emergency department (ED) destination within a single healthcare system using real-time assessment of hospital and ED capacity and crowding metrics. Objective: The primary objective of the navigator program was to improve load-balancing between two closely situated emergency departments, both of which feed into the same inpatient facilities of a single healthcare system. A registered nurse in the hospital command center made real-time recommendations to emergency medical services (EMS) providers via radio, identifying the preferred destination for each transported patient based on such factors as chief complaint, ED volume, and waiting room census. The destination decision was made via the utilization of various real-time measures of health system capacity in conjunction with existing protocols dictating campus-specific clinical service availability. The objective of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of this real-time ambulance destination direction program as reflected in changes to emergency medical services (EMS) turnaround time and the incidence of intercampus transports. Methods: A before-and-after time series was performed to determine if program implementation resulted in a change in EMS turnaround time or incidence of intercampus transfers. Results: Implementation of the nurse navigator program was associated with a statistically significant decrease in EMS turnaround times for all levels of dispatch and transport at both hospital campuses. Intercampus transfers also showed significant improvement following implementation of the intervention, although this effect lagged behind implementation by several months. Conclusion: A proactive approach to EMS destination control using a nurse navigator with access to real-time hospital and ED capacity metrics appears to be an effective method of decreasing EMS turnaround time.

A Research Agenda for the Assessment and Management of Acute Behavioral Changes in Elderly Emergency Department Patients

Introduction

Agitation, mental illness, and delirium are common reasons for older adults to seek care in the emergency department (ED). There are significant knowledge gaps in understanding how to best screen older adults for these conditions and how to manage them. In addition, in areas where research has been performed, implementation has been slow. A working group convened to develop a set of high-priority research questions that would advance the understanding of optimal management of older adults with acute behavioral changes in the ED. This manuscript is the product of a breakout session on "Special Populations: Agitation in the Elderly" from the 2016 Coalition on Psychiatric Emergencies' first Research Consensus Conference on Acute Mental Illness.

Methods

Participants were identified with expertise in emergency medicine (EM), geriatric EM, and psychiatry. Background literature reviews were performed prior to the in-person meeting in four key areas: delirium; dementia; substance abuse or withdrawal; and mental illness in older adults. Input was solicited from all participants during the meeting, and questions were iteratively focused and revised, voted on, and ranked by importance.

Results

Fourteen questions were identified by the group with high consensus for their importance related to the care of older adults with agitation in the ED. The questions were grouped into three topic areas: screening and identification; management strategies; and the approach to delirium.

Conclusion

It is important for emergency physicians to recognize the spectrum of underlying causes of behavioral changes, have the tools to screen older adults for those causes, and employ methods to treat the underlying causes and ameliorate their symptoms. Answers to the identified research questions have great potential to improve the care of older adults presenting with behavioral changes.

Increased Healthcare-Associated Infections in a Surgical Intensive Care Unit Related to Boarding Non-Surgical Patients

Background: Hospital over-capacity often forces boarding patients outside of their designated intensive care unit (ICU). Anecdotal evidence suggested medical intensive care unit (MICU) patients boarding in the surgical intensive care unit (SICU) were responsible for increases in healthcare-associated infection (HAI) rates. We studied the effect of ICU boarding on rates of SICU HAIs. Methods: This single-center, retrospective two-year database study compared primary SICU patients (Home) to MICU patients boarding in the SICU (Boarders). Variables studied included age, gender, Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation III (APACHE III) scores, and comorbidities. Healthcare-associated infections included Clostridium difficile infection, catheter-associated urinary tract infections, central line-associated blood stream infection, and ventilator-associated pneumonia. Student t-test, Fisher exact testing, and a multivariable regression model were used to determine the significance of associations. Results: A total of 2,562 patients were included in the study; 328 (12.8%) were Boarders and 2,234 (87.2%) were Home. Univariable analysis demonstrated that Boarders were older (64.0 ± 16.9 vs. 60.2 ± 17.4), more severely ill (APACHE III score 70.5 ± 31.1 vs. 53.4 ± 21.9), more likely to have cirrhosis, coronary artery disease, and asthma/chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, but less likely to have hypertension. On univariable analysis boarding was associated with an increase HAI rate (19 HAI/1,000 patient days vs. 6.2, p < 0.001). Multivariable regression modeling demonstrated boarding status remained independently associated with HAI (odds ratio [OR] 1.83 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.02-3.27). Cost estimates demonstrated an additional cost of $83,303 per 1,000 patient days. Conclusion: The practice of hospital boarding is associated with development of HAI and increased hospital costs. Efforts at determining the cause of this increase and then reducing HAIs will improve patient care and help hospital budgets.

Emergency Department Resource Use in Pediatric Pneumonia: Point-of-Care Lung Ultrasonography versus Chest Radiography

OBJECTIVES

Point-of-care lung ultrasonography (US) is an alternative to chest radiography for imaging of suspected community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) in children. We compared pediatric emergency department (ED) time metrics between children who received point-of-care lung US versus chest radiography. Secondary objectives were comparisons of health system costs and other resources in these imaging groups.

METHODS

This work was a retrospective matched cohort study of children aged 0 to 18 years in an academic urban pediatric ED who were imaged for suspected CAP with either point-of-care lung US or chest radiography.

RESULTS

A total of 202 patients (101 in each group) were included in the study. The point-of-care lung US group spent a mean of 75.9 (SE, 14.3) minutes less from physician assessment to discharge (P < .0001) and 60.9 (SE, 18.1) minutes less in the overall ED length of stay (P = .0008). Physician billings and facility fees were both significantly lower (P < .0001) in the point-of-care lung US group, for a mean health systems savings of CAN$187.1 (SE, CAN$21.9).

CONCLUSIONS

In children undergoing imaging for suspected CAP in our pediatric ED, point-of-care lung US by pediatric emergency medicine physicians was associated with decreased time and cost compared with chest radiography.

An intervention to improve retention in emergency nursing

The UK has a serious shortage of nurses and for the first time in recent nursing history 27% more UK registrants left the register in 2016-2017 than joined it. Emergency nurses are particularly affected as their environment is unpredictable, fast-paced and increasingly crowded. This article reports the results of a study of a successful initiative to retain senior emergency nurses in a London trust.

Performance of the Manchester triage system in older emergency department patients: a retrospective cohort study

BACKGROUND

Studies on the reliability of the MTS and its predictive power for hospitalisation and mortality in the older population have demonstrated mixed results. The objective is to evaluate the performance of the Manchester Triage System (MTS) in older patients (≥65 years) by assessing the predictive ability of the MTS for emergency department resource utilisation, emergency department length of stay (ED-LOS), hospitalisation, and in-hospital mortality rate. The secondary goal was to evaluate the performance of the MTS in older surgical versus medical patients.

METHODS

A retrospective cohort study was conducted of all emergency department visits by patients ≥65 years between 01 and 09-2011 and 31-08-2012. Performance of the MTS was assessed by comparing the association of the MTS with emergency department resource utilisation, ED-LOS, hospital admission, and in-hospital mortality in older patients and the reference group (18-64 years), and by estimating the area under the receiver operating characteristics curves.

RESULTS

Data on 7108 emergency department visits by older patients and 13,767 emergency department visits by patients aged 18-64 years were included. In both patient groups, a higher emergency department resource utilisation was associated with a higher MTS urgency. The AUC for the MTS and hospitalisation was 0.74 (95%CI 0.73-0.75) in older patients and 0.76 (95%CI 0.76-0.77) in patients aged 18-64 years. Comparison of the predictive ability of the MTS for in-hospital mortality in older patients with patients aged 18-64 years revealed an AUC of 0.71 (95%CI 0.68-0.74) versus 0.79 (95%CI 0.72-0.85). The majority of older patients (54.8%) were evaluated by a medical specialty and 45.2% by a surgical specialty. The predictive ability of the MTS for hospitalisation and in-hospital mortality was higher in older surgical patients than in medical patients (AUC 0.74, 95%CI 0.72-0.76 and 0.74, 95%CI 0.68-0.81 versus 0.69, 95%CI 0.67-0.71 and 0.66, 95%CI 0.62-0.69).

CONCLUSION

The performance of the MTS appeared inferior in older patients than younger patients, illustrated by a worse predictive ability of the MTS for in-hospital mortality in older patients. The MTS demonstrated a better performance in older surgical patients than older medical patients regarding hospitalisation and in-hospital mortality.

Determinants of antibiotic prescribing for upper respiratory tract infections in an emergency department with good primary care access: a qualitative analysis

Upper respiratory tract infections (URTIs) account for substantial attendances at emergency departments (EDs). There is a need to elucidate determinants of antibiotic prescribing in time-strapped EDs - popular choices for primary care despite highly accessible primary care clinics. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with purposively sampled physicians (n = 9) in an adult ED in Singapore. All interviews were analysed using thematic analysis and further interpreted using the Social Ecological Model to explain prescribing determinants. Themes included: (1) reliance on clinical knowledge and judgement, (2) patient-related factors, (3) patient-physician relationship factors, (4) perceived practice norms, (5) policies and treatment guidelines and (6) patient education and awareness. The physicians relied strongly on their clinical knowledge and judgement in managing URTI cases and seldom interfered with their peers' clinical decisions. Despite departmental norms of not prescribing antibiotics for URTIs, physicians would prescribe antibiotics when faced with uncertainty in patients' diagnoses, treating immunocompromised or older patients with comorbidities, and for patients demanding antibiotics, especially under time constraints. Participants had a preference for antibiotic prescribing guidelines based on local epidemiology, but viewed hospital policies on prescribing as a hindrance to clinical judgement. Participants highlighted the need for more public education and awareness on the appropriate use of antibiotics and management of URTIs. Organisational practice norms strongly influenced antibiotic prescribing decisions by physicians, who can be swayed by time pressures and patient demands. Clinical decision support tools, hospital guidelines and patient education targeting at individual, interpersonal and community levels could reduce unnecessary antibiotic use.

Characteristics of ED crowding in the Lazio Region (Italy) and short-term health outcomes

The effect of emergency department (ED) crowding on patient care has been studied for several years in the scientific literature. We evaluate the association between ED crowding and short-term mortality and hospitalization in the Lazio region (Italy) using two different measures. A cohort of visits in the Lazio region ED during 2012-2014 was enrolled. Only discharged patients were selected. ED crowding was estimated using two measures, length of stay (LOS), and Emergency Department volume (EDV). LOS was defined as the interval of time from entrance to discharge; EDV was defined at the time of each new entrance in ED. The outcomes under study were mortality and hospitalization within 7 days from ED discharge. A multivariate logistic model was performed (Odds Ratios, ORs, 95% CI). The cohort includes 2,344,572 visits. ED crowding is associated with an increased risk of short-term hospitalization using both LOS and EDV as exposures (LOS 1-2 h: OR = 1.71, 95% CI 1.66-1.76, LOS 2-5 h: OR = 1.38, 95% CI 1.34-1.43, LOS > 5 h OR = 1.45 95% CI 1.40-1.50 compared to patients with 1 h of LOS; EDV 75°-95° percentile: OR = 1.02, 95% CI 0.99-1.05 and EDV > 95° percentile: OR = 1.06, 95% CI 1.01-1.11 compared to patients with a EDV < 75° percentile upon arrival). Increased risk of short-term mortality is found with increasing level of LOS. High levels of EDV at the time of patients' arrival and longer LOS in ED are associated with greater risks of hospitalization for patients discharged 7 days before. LOS in ED is also associated with an increased risk of mortality.

Emergency department models of care in Queensland: a multisite cross-sectional study

Objective The acuity and number of presentations being made to emergency departments (EDs) is increasing. In an effort to safely and efficiently manage this increase and optimise patient outcomes, innovative models of care (MOC) have been implemented. What is not clear is how these MOC reflect the needs of patients or relate to each other or to ED performance. The aim of this study was to describe ED MOC in Queensland, Australia. Methods Situated within a larger mixed-methods study, the present study was a cross-sectional study. In early 2015, leaders (medical directors and nurse managers) from public hospital EDs in Queensland were invited to complete a survey detailing ED activity, staffing profiles, treatment space, MOC and National Emergency Access Target (NEAT) performance. Routinely collected ED information system data was also used. Results Twenty of the 27 EDs invited participated in the study (response rate 74%). An extensive array of MOC were identified that were categorised into those that facilitate input, throughput and output from the ED. There was no consistent evidence as to the relative effectiveness of these MOC in achieving ED performance benchmarks, such as NEAT performance. Conclusion There is considerable variability in the MOC used throughout EDs in Queensland. A more complete analysis of the relative effectiveness of different MOC either in isolation or as part of a comprehensive approach would help inform more consistent MOC in Queensland EDs. What is known about the topic? MOC in any given ED are implemented in response to factors such as the geographical location of the hospital, hospital-specific characteristics and service profile, staffing profile and patient demographic profile. In the era of time-based targets, they may also serve to address a particular aspect of flow in the face of rising ED demand. Although many of the MOC attempt to deal with flow in a linear fashion, target specific phases of the ED journey or address particular patient cohorts, what is clear is that not all EDs are shaped and formed the same. What does this paper add? The study provides a comprehensive description of the varied models of care operating within Queensland public hospital EDs and how they relate to ED performance. A basic taxonomy of contemporary ED MOC is necessary to allow comparison between departments and inform decisions regarding safety, efficiency and cost-effectiveness. What are the implications to practitioners? A contemporary understanding of the presence and profile of ED MOC that currently exist within a network of hospitals and health services is important for managers, clinicians and patients to inform decision-making regarding the safety, clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of these models. This understanding can also inform where and how further improvements in care delivery can progress.

Point-of-care ultrasound findings in unselected patients in an emergency department -results from a prospective observational trial

Background

Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) can improve patient management in the emergency department (ED). However, previous studies have focused only on selected groups of patients, such as trauma, shock, dyspnea, or critically ill patients, or patients with an already known diagnosis. Most patients seen in the ED do not match these criteria. We aim to present total prevalence of positive findings when basic POCUS is applied to the broad population of patients seen in an emergency department.

Methods

We conducted a single-center prospective explorative observational study of 405 unselected patients aged 18 years or over. A structured whole-body ultrasound examination was performed on all patients within 2 h of arrival to the ED. The ultrasound examination consisted of focused cardiac ultrasound, focused abdominal ultrasound, focused assessment with sonography for trauma (FAST), and focused lung ultrasound.

Results

We managed to perform 94.5% of all planned examinations. The study revealed positive findings in 39.3% of all included patients. This study presents the prevalence of positive findings among subgroups of patients. Divided among the categories of chief complaint, we found 62 positive examinations in 58 (14.3%; 95% CI, 10.9–17.7) unique patients with orthopedic complaints, 77 positive examinations among 59 (14.6%; 95% CI, 11.1–18.0) unique patients with medical complaints, and 55 positive examinations among 42 (10.4%; 95% CI, 7.4–13.3) unique patients with abdominal surgical complaints.

Conclusion

POCUS revealed positive findings in more than one third of unselected patients in the emergency department. The study presents the findings and distribution among categories of chief complaints. Future investigations are necessary to elucidate the implication of the findings.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (10.1186/s12873-018-0211-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Factors associated with boarding and length of stay for pediatric mental health emergency visits

OBJECTIVE

To determine demographic and clinical risk factors associated with boarding (length of stay ≥24 h) for pediatric mental health emergency department (ED) visits.

METHODS

This is a retrospective cross-sectional analysis of mental health visits identified by diagnosis codes for children 5-18 years old presenting to a tertiary pediatric ED in 2016. We performed multivariate logistic regression to identify demographic and clinical factors associated with boarding.

RESULTS

There were 1746 mental health visits and 386 (22%) visits had length of stay ≥24 h. In the multivariate logistic regression model, factors associated with boarding included: private insurance (OR 1.59, 95% CI 1.15, 2.19) and having both private and public insurance (OR 1.68, 95% CI 1.16, 2.43) relative to public insurance; presentation during a school month (OR 2.17, 95% CI 1.30, 3.63); physical or chemical restraint use (OR 4.80, 95% CI 2.61, 8.84); comorbid autism or developmental delay (OR 1.82, 95% CI 1.35, 2.46); prior psychiatric hospitalization (OR 2.55, 95% CI 1.93, 3.36); and reasons for presentation of agitation, aggression, or homicidal ideation (OR 2.76, 95% CI 1.40, 5.45), depression, self-injury, or suicidal ideation (OR 2.79, 95% CI 1.45, 5.40), and bipolar, mania, or psychosis (OR 5.78, 95% CI 2.36, 14.09) relative to anxiety.

CONCLUSIONS

Insurance status, presentation month, restraint use, autism or developmental delay comorbidity, prior psychiatric hospitalization, and reason for presentation are associated with pediatric mental health ED boarding. Resources should be directed to improve the mental health care system for children with identified risk factors for boarding.

Another Look at the Persistent Moral Problem of Emergency Department Crowding

This article revisits the persistent problem of crowding in US hospital emergency departments (EDs). It begins with a brief review of origins of this problem, terms used to refer to ED crowding, proposed definitions and measures of crowding, and causal factors. The article then summarizes recent studies that document adverse moral consequences of ED crowding, including poorer patient outcomes; increased medical errors; compromises in patient physical privacy, confidentiality, and communication; and provider moral distress. It describes several organizational strategies implemented to relieve crowding and implications of ED crowding for individual practitioners. The article concludes that ED crowding remains a morally significant problem and calls on emergency physicians, ED and hospital leaders, emergency medicine professional associations, and policymakers to collaborate on solutions.

Evaluation of a Practice Improvement Protocol for Patient Transfer From the Emergency Department to the Surgical Intensive Care Unit After a Level I Trauma Activation

BACKGROUND

ED boarding is a major issue in many hospitals. ED boarding occurs when there is insufficient hospital capacity to supply inpatient beds for admitted patients. ED boarding is not only a problem because of increased wait times for patients but also because it results in delays in administration of medication, higher rates of complications, and increased mortality.

METHODS

In an attempt to improve patient flow and reduce time spent in the emergency department for patients requiring admission to the surgical intensive care unit (SICU), the emergency department, trauma service, and SICU collaborated on a guideline. The protocol developed focused on level I trauma-activated patients who were admitted directly from the emergency department to the SICU. We compared the transfer times before the protocol was initiated (January 1, 2016 to December 31, 2016) with the transfer times after initiation (January 1, 2017 to December 31, 2017) using a paired Students' t-test. Other outcome variables analyzed were hospital and intensive care unit (ICU) length of stay, mortality, complication rate, ventilator days, ventilator-free days, ICU-free days, and injury severity score (ISS).

RESULTS

The average time to transfer for 2016 was 408.05 minutes (standard deviation 362.76) versus 142.73 minutes (standard deviation 101.90) for 2017. Emergency nurses saved 265.32 minutes per patient, totaling 8,755.56 minutes saved overall. Total amount of nursing hours saved was 146 hours. This was significant at P = 0.0015. No other variables analyzed were significant.

CONCLUSION

We reduced the time to transfer from the emergency department to the SICU significantly by implementing a new protocol to expedite this transfer among level I trauma activations. Our protocol shows that a collaborative effort between the main emergency department and SICU can result in expedited care for injured and critically ill patients that not only increases care for the ill but also creates valuable space in a busy emergency department for better patient flow.

Procedures performed by general practitioners and general internal medicine physicians - a comparison based on routine data from Northern Germany

Background

In response to a rising shortage of general practitioners (GPs), physicians in general internal medicine (GIM) have become part of the German primary care physician workforce. Previous studies have shown substantial differences in practice patterns between both specialties. The aim of this study was to analyse and compare the application of procedures by German GPs and GIM physicians based on routine data.

Methods

The Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians in the federal state Schleswig-Holstein (Northern Germany) provided invoicing data of the first quarters of 2013 and 2015. Differences between GPs and GIM physicians in the implementation rate of 46 selected primary care procedures were examined by means of the Pearson χ²-test. The selection of procedures was based on international and own preliminary studies on primary care procedures.

Results

In the first quarter of 2013/2015 respectively, 1228/1227 GPs and 447/484 GIM physicians provided services in Schleswig-Holstein. Significant differences were found for 20 of the 46 procedures. GPs had higher application rates of procedures concerning health screening (e.g. adolescent health examination, well-child visits) and minor surgery. GIM physicians more often applied technology-oriented procedures, such as ultrasound scans, electrocardiograms (ECG), and 24-h ambulatory blood pressure measurements. The treatment patterns of both specialities did not vary much during the study period. Cardiac stress testing was the only significantly increased GP procedure in that time.

Conclusions

Our results suggest substantial differences in the application of procedures between GPs and GIM physicians with potential consequences for the overall primary healthcare provision. The findings could foster a discussion about training needs for procedures in primary care to ensure its comprehensiveness. The results reflect scope for changes in vocational training in the future for an effective and efficient re-allocation of primary healthcare.

Experience of Emergency Department Patients With Using the Talking Pole Device: Prospective Interventional Descriptive Study

BACKGROUND

Patient engagement is important. However, it can be difficult in emergency departments (EDs).

OBJECTIVE

The aim of this study was to evaluate the satisfaction of ED patients using a patient-friendly health information technology (HIT) device, the "Talking Pole," and to assess the factors relevant to their satisfaction.

METHODS

This study was conducted in May 2017 at the ED of a tertiary hospital. The "Talking Pole" is a smartphone-based device attached to a intravenous infusion pole with sensors. It is capable of sensing patient movement and fluid dynamics. In addition, it provides clinical information from electronic medical records to patients and serves as a wireless communication tool between patients and nurses. Patients and caregivers who entered the observation room of the ED were selected for the study. The "Talking Pole" devices were provided to all participants, regardless of their need for an intravenous pole upon admittance to the ED. After 2 hours, each participant was given an 18-item questionnaire created for this research, measured on a 5-point Likert scale, regarding their satisfaction with "Talking Pole."

RESULTS

Among 52 participants recruited, 54% (28/52) were patients and the remaining were caregivers. In total, 38% (20/52) were male participants; the average age was 54.6 (SD 12.9) years, and 63% (33/52) of the participants were oncology patients and their caregivers. The overall satisfaction rate was 4.17 (SD 0.79 ) points. Spearman correlation coefficient showed a strong association of "overall satisfaction" with "comparison to the previous visit" (ρ=.73 ), "perceived benefit" (ρ=.73), "information satisfaction" (ρ=.70), and "efficiency" (ρ=.70).

CONCLUSIONS

In this study, we introduced a patient-friendly HIT device, the "Talking Pole." Its architecture focused on enhancing information delivery, which is regarded as a bottleneck toward achieving patient engagement in EDs. Patient and caregiver satisfaction with the "Talking Pole" was positive in the ED environment. In particular, correlation coefficient results improved our understanding about patients' satisfaction, HIT devices, and services used in the ED.

A Real-Time Autonomous Dashboard for the Emergency Department: 5-Year Case Study

Background

The task of monitoring and managing the entire emergency department (ED) is becoming more important due to increasing pressure on the ED. Recently, dashboards have received the spotlight as health information technology to support these tasks.

Objective

This study aimed to describe the development of a real-time autonomous dashboard for the ED and to evaluate perspectives of clinical staff on its usability.

Methods

We developed a dashboard based on three principles—“anytime, anywhere, at a glance;” “minimal interruption to workflow;” and “protect patient privacy”—and 3 design features—“geographical layout,” “patient-level alert,” and “real-time summary data.” Items to evaluate the dashboard were selected based on the throughput factor of the conceptual model of ED crowding. Moreover, ED physicians and nurses were surveyed using the system usability scale (SUS) and situation awareness index as well as a questionnaire we created on the basis of the construct of the Situation Awareness Rating Technique.

Results

The first version of the ED dashboard was successfully launched in 2013, and it has undergone 3 major revisions since then because of geographical changes in ED and modifications to improve usability. A total of 52 ED staff members participated in the survey. The average SUS score of the dashboard was 67.6 points, which indicates “OK-to-Good” usability. The participants also reported that the dashboard provided efficient “concentration support” (4.15 points), “complexity representation” (4.02 points), “variability representation” (3.96 points), “information quality” (3.94 points), and “familiarity” (3.94 points). However, the “division of attention” was rated at 2.25 points.

Conclusions

We developed a real-time autonomous ED dashboard and successfully used it for 5 years with good evaluation from users.

Patients Attending Emergency Departments

BACKGROUND

The number of patients in emergency departments has risen steadily in recent years, with a particular increase in patients not requiring urgent treatment. The aim of this study is to characterize this group of patients with respect to their sociodemographic features, health status, and reasons for attending an emergency department.

METHODS

PiNo Nord is a cross-sectional observational study representing two full working weeks in five different hospitals. Patients were questioned in personal interviews, and medical diagnoses were documented. The data were analyzed with multivariate logistic regressions in mixed multilevel models. Predictors for the subjectively perceived treatment urgency were identified by stepwise backward selection.

RESULTS

The 1175 patients questioned had an average age of 41.8 years and 52.9% were male. 54.7% said the degree of their treatment urgency was low. 41.3% had visited the emergency department on their own initiative, 17.0% on the advice or referral of their primary care physician, and 8.0% on the advice or referral of a specialist. The strongest predictors for low subjective treatment urgency were musculoskeletal trauma (odds ratio [OR] 2.18), skin conditions (OR 2.15), and the momentary unavailability of a primary care physician (OR 1.70).

CONCLUSION

More than half of the patients do not think their condition requires urgent treatment and thus do not meet the definition of a medical emergency. Patients' reasons for visiting the emergency department are varied; aside from the treatment urgency of the health condition itself, the reason may lie in perceived structural circumstances and individual preferences.

Should I be more concerned about patient care or the four-hour target?

UK emergency departments (EDs) are high-pressure environments focused on delivering care in the most efficient way to patients with a range of health problems. For many people EDs are the front door of the NHS and are a focus of significant media and political interest. People who attend EDs are often anxious and a main element of their concern is waiting time for treatment. In UK EDs the four-hour target is a main NHS target and a cornerstone of evaluating ED performance. There is ongoing debate about whether spending additional time in EDs affects patient care and outcomes, with some research showing increased mortality associated with longer stays and some showing no effect on mortality. Evidence suggests that patients are spending longer in UK EDs and it is possible that those who remain longer than four hours could have worse outcomes. This article identifies the effects of prolonged ED length of stay through a systematic literature review of data published since implementation of the four-hour target to measure the relationship between breaching the target and morbidity and mortality.

Predicting hospital admission at the emergency department triage: A novel prediction model

BACKGROUND

Emergency department (ED) overcrowding is a growing international patient safety issue. A major contributor to overcrowding is long wait times for inpatient hospital admission. The objective of this study is to create a model that can predict a patient's need for hospital admission at the time of triage.

METHODS

Retrospective observational study of electronic clinical records of all ED visits over ten years to a large urban hospital in Singapore. The data was randomly divided into a derivation set and a validation set. We used the derivation set to develop a logistic regression model that predicts probability of hospital admission for patients presenting to the ED. We tested the model on the validation set and evaluated the performance with receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis.

RESULTS

A total of 1,232,016 visits were included for final analysis, of which 38.7% were admitted. Eight variables were included in the final model: age group, race, postal code, day of week, time of day, triage category, mode of arrival, and fever status. The model performed well on the validation set with an area under the curve of 0.825 (95% CI 0.824-0.827). Increasing age, increasing triage acuity, and mode of arrival via private patient transport were most predictive of the need for admission.

CONCLUSIONS

We developed a model that accurately predicts admission for patients presenting to the ED using demographic, administrative, and clinical data routinely collected at triage. Implementation of the model into the electronic health record could help reduce the burden of overcrowding.

Calling on the Patient's Perspective in Emergency Medicine: Analysis of 1 Year of a Patient Callback Program

Background:

Patient-centered approaches in the evaluation of patient experience are increasingly important priorities for quality improvement in health-care delivery. Our objective was to investigate common themes in patient-reported data to better understand areas for improvement in the emergency department (ED) experience.

Methods:

A large urban, tertiary-care ED conducted phone interviews with 2607 patients who visited the ED during 2015. Patients were asked to identify one area that would have significantly improved their visit. Transcripts were analyzed using content analysis, and the results were summarized with descriptive statistics.

Results:

The most commonly cited themes for improvement in the patient experience were wait time (49.4%) and communication (14.6%). Related, but more nuanced, themes emerged around the perception of ED crowding and compassionate care as additional important contributors to the patient experience. Other frequently cited factors contributing to a negative experience were the discharge process and inability to complete follow-up plan (8.0%), environmental factors (7.9%), perceived competency of providers in the evaluation or treatment (7.4%), and pain management (7.4%).

Conclusions:

Wait times and perceptions of ED crowding, as well as provider communication and compassionate care, are significant factors identified by patients that affect their ED experience.

Validation of deep-learning-based triage and acuity score using a large national dataset

AIM

Triage is important in identifying high-risk patients amongst many less urgent patients as emergency department (ED) overcrowding has become a national crisis recently. This study aims to validate that a Deep-learning-based Triage and Acuity Score (DTAS) identifies high-risk patients more accurately than existing triage and acuity scores using a large national dataset.

METHODS

We conducted a retrospective observational cohort study using data from the Korean National Emergency Department Information System (NEDIS), which collected data on visits in real time from 151 EDs. The NEDIS data was split into derivation data (January 2014-June 2016) and validation data (July-December 2016). We also used data from the Sejong General Hospital (SGH) for external validation (January-December 2017). We predicted in-hospital mortality, critical care, and hospitalization using initial information of ED patients (age, sex, chief complaint, time from symptom onset to ED visit, arrival mode, trauma, initial vital signs and mental status as predictor variables).

RESULTS

A total of 11,656,559 patients were included in this study. The primary outcome was in-hospital mortality. The Area Under the Receiver Operating Characteristic curve (AUROC) and Area Under the Precision and Recall Curve (AUPRC) of DTAS were 0.935 and 0.264. It significantly outperformed Korean triage and acuity score (AUROC:0.785, AUPRC:0.192), modified early warning score (AUROC:0.810, AUPRC:0.116), logistic regression (AUROC:0.903, AUPRC:0.209), and random forest (AUROC:0.910, AUPRC:0.179).

CONCLUSION

Deep-learning-based Triage and Acuity Score predicted in-hospital mortality, critical care, and hospitalization more accurately than existing triages and acuity, and it was validated using a large, multicenter dataset.

Integrating Point-of-care Testing Into a Community Emergency Department: A Mixed-methods Evaluation

OBJECTIVE

Point-of-care testing (POCT) is a commonly used technology that hastens the time to laboratory results in emergency departments (ED). We evaluated an ED-based POCT program on ED length of stay (LOS) and time to care, coupled with qualitative interviews of local ED stakeholders.

METHODS

We conducted a mixed-methods study (2012-2016) to examine the impact of POCT in a single, community ED. The quantiative analysis involved an observational before-after study comparing time to laboratory test result (POC troponin or POC chemistry) and ED LOS after implementation of POCT, using a propensity-weighted interrupted time series analysis (ITSA). A complementary qualitative analysis involved five semistructured interviews with staff using grounded theory on the benefits and challenges to ED POCT.

RESULTS

A total of 47,399 ED visits were included in the study (24,705 in the preintervention period and 22,694 in the postintervention period). After POCT implementation, overall laboratory testing increased marginally from 61% to 62%. Central laboratory troponin and chemistry declined by > 50% and was replaced by POCT. Prior to POCT implementation, time to troponin and chemistry had declined steadily due to other improvements in laboratory efficiency. After POCT implementation, there was an immediate 20-minute further decline (p < 0.001) in both time to troponin and time to chemistry results using the propensity-weighted comparisons. However, the declining trend observed prior to POCT implementation did not continue at the same rate after implementation. Similarly, prior to POCT implementation, ED LOS declined due to other quality improvements. After POCT implementation, LOS continued declined at a similar rate. Because of this prior trend, the ITSA did not show a significant decline in LOS attributable to POCT. Common benefits of POCT perceived by staff in qualitative interviews included improved quality of care (64%) and reductions in time to test results (44%). Common challenges included concerns over POCT accuracy (32%) and technical barriers (29%).

CONCLUSION

In the study ED, implementation of POCT was associated with a reduction in time to test result for both troponin and chemistry. Local staff felt that faster time to test result improved quality of care; however, concerns were raised with POCT accuracy.

Statewide Method of Measuring Ambulance Patient Offload Times

OBJECTIVE

Ambulance patient offload time (APOT) also known colloquially as "Wall time" has been described in various jurisdictions but seems to be highly variable. Any attempt to improve APOT requires the use of common definitions and standard methodology to measure the extent of the problem.

METHODS

An Ambulance Offload Delay Task Force in California developed a set of standard definitions and methodology to measure APOT for transported 9-1-1 patients. It is defined as the time "interval between the arrival of an ambulance at an emergency department and the time that the patient is transferred to an ED gurney, bed, chair or other acceptable location and the ED assumes responsibility for care of the patient." Local EMS agencies voluntarily reported data according to the standard methodology to the California EMS Authority (State agency).

RESULTS

Data were reported for 9-1-1 transports during 2017 from 9 of 33 local EMS Agencies in California that comprise 37 percent of the state population. These represent 830,637 ambulance transports to 126 hospitals. APOT shows significant variation by EMS agency with half of the agencies demonstrating significant delays. Offload times vary markedly by hospital as well as by region. Three-fourths of hospitals detained EMS crews more than one hour, 40% more than two hours, and one-third delayed EMS return to service by more than three hours.

CONCLUSION

This first step to address offload delays in California consists of standardized definitions for data collection to address the significant variability inherent in obtaining data from 33 local agencies, hundreds of EMS provider agencies, and 320 acute care hospital Emergency Departments that receive 9-1-1 ambulance transports. The first year of standardized data collection of ambulance patient offload times revealed significant ambulance patient offload time delays that are not distributed uniformly, resulting in a substantial financial burden for some EMS providers in California.

Expectations and needs of relatives of critically ill patients in the emergency department

Background:

The care of critically ill patients is a strong indicator of service quality provided in the emergency department. Since families are the major social support sources, assessing the family members’ needs may reduce their anxiety and depression owing to the acute situation of their loved ones while improving the patients’ recovery.

Objective:

We aimed to evaluate the expectations and needs of relatives of critically ill patients to formulate solutions to improve the quality of emergency department service.

Methods:

We conducted a prospective, cross-sectional survey of 873 relatives of nontraumatic, critically ill patients who completed the Turkish version of the Critical Care Family Needs Inventory in the emergency department of a university hospital in Turkey. The needs statements were evaluated under five subheadings: meaning, proximity, communication, comfort, and support.

Results:

In total, 249 (28.5%) participants were females and 624 (71.5%) were males (mean age, 41.79 years). The “meaning” category was given the highest priority, followed by “communication,” with average points of 3.75 and 3.57, respectively. The most important needs were being informed regularly about the patient’s condition and being assured that the patient is under the best possible care, whereas personal, physical, and emotional needs were the least important.

Conclusion:

Relatives of critically ill patients primarily focus on the quality of patients’ care. Creating a positive rapport based on trust and providing a healthcare environment where the expectations and needs of relatives are met should be prioritized by emergency department physicians, nurses, and other staff while caring for critically ill patients.

Independent determinants of prolonged emergency department length of stay in a tertiary care centre: a prospective cohort study

BACKGROUND

Emergency department (ED) overcrowding is a potential threat for patient safety. We searched for independent determinants of prolonged ED length of stay (LOS) with the aim to identify factors which can be targeted to reduce ED LOS, which may help in preventing overcrowding.

METHODS

This prospective cohort study included consecutive ED patients in a Dutch tertiary care centre. Multivariable logistic regression analysis was used to identify independent determinants of ED LOS > 4 h, including patient characteristics (demographics, referral type, acuity, (number of) presenting complaints and comorbidity), treating specialty, diagnostic testing, consultations, number of patients in the ED and disposition. Furthermore, we quantified the absolute time delays (measured in real-time) associated with the most important independent determinants of prolonged ED LOS.

RESULTS

In 1434 included patients independent determinants of prolonged ED LOS were number and type of presenting complaints, specialty, laboratory/radiology testing and consultations, and ICU admission. Modifiable determinants with the largest impact were blood testing; Adjusted odds ratio (AOR (95%-CI)); 3.45 (1.95-6.11), urine testing; 1.79 (1.21-2.63), radiology imaging; 3.02 (2.13-4.30), and consultation; 5.90 (4.08-8.54). Combined with the laboratory/radiology testing and/or consultations (requested in 1123 (78%) patients) the decision-making and discharge process consumed between 74 (42%) and 117 (66%) minutes of the total ED LOS of 177 (IQR: 129-225) minutes.

CONCLUSIONS

In tertiary care EDs, ED LOS can be reduced if the process of laboratory/radiology testing and consulting is optimized and the decision-making and discharge procedures are accelerated.