• Australas J Ageing · Dec 2010

    Quantification of the proportion of transfers from residential aged care facilities to the emergency department that could be avoided through improved primary care services.

    • Jim Codde, Jackie Frankel, Glenn Arendts, and Paul Babich.
    • South Metropolitan Area Health Service, Western Australia, Australia.
    • Australas J Ageing. 2010 Dec 1; 29 (4): 167-71.

    Aim  To describe elderly patient transfers from residential aged care facilities (RACF) to hospital emergency departments (ED), and to estimate the proportion of transfers that may be avoidable with improved primary care service to RACF.Methods  A descriptive study analysing data from a single tertiary hospital ED patient database, medical record reviews from a random sample of RACF patients presenting to ED and previously published reports.Results  Thirty-one per cent of all transfers at our hospital were potentially avoidable. This sits within the range (7% to 48%) found internationally. A small number of simple interventions could potentially reduce unnecessary ED transfer from RACF.Conclusions  Evidence from multiple sources suggests that a meaningful proportion of transfers from RACF to ED may be avoided.© 2010 The Authors; Australasian Journal on Ageing © 2010 ACOTA.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…