16 d’octubre 2013

ED Crowding

Informe de l’activitat notificada al Registre del conjunt mínim bàsic de dades d’urgències

How many visits to the emergency department are really urgent?. Up to now we hadn't a clear answer. A recent report says clearly that according to triage data, 13,3% of visits at hospitals ED are non-urgent. Is this figure accurate?. Well, if we look at the US, 12% of visits are non-urgent. We know that triage data is the only possible source for this evaluation right now. Other approaches are possible, but require larger effort.
From the data, we can conclude that reducing non-urgent care at ED is always important, but may have low impact on ED crowding.
In p.13 of the report I find that 3,9% of visits have uncertain funding. I can't understand why. Only 4.681 visits were performed under international social security agreements, it seems that there are very few cases.
Anyway, it is the first release of the report, and this is good news. We need such information to understand what's going on.