• Victoria Shaw, An Yu, Matthew Parsons, Tava Olsen, and Cameron Walker.
• Department of Nursing, Toi Ohomai Institute of Technology, Rotorua, New Zealand.
• Cochrane Db Syst Rev. 2023 Jul 11; 7 (7): CD014553CD014553.

BackgroundEmergency departments (EDs) are facing serious and significant issues in the delivery of effective and efficient care to patients. Acute assessment services have been implemented at many hospitals internationally to assist in maintaining patient flow for identified groups of patients attending the ED. Identifying the risks and benefits, and optimal configurations of these services may be beneficial to those wishing to utilise an acute assessment service to improve patient flow.ObjectivesTo assess the effects of acute assessment services on patient flow following attendance at a hospital ED.Search MethodsWe searched MEDLINE, CENTRAL, Embase and two trials registers on 24 September 2022 to identify studies. No restrictions were imposed on publication year, publication type, or publication language.Selection CriteriaStudies eligible for inclusion were randomised trials and cluster-randomised trials with at least two intervention and two control sites. Participants were adults (as defined by study authors) receiving care either in the ED or the acute assessment service, where both were based in the hospital setting. The comparison was hospital-based acute assessment services with usual, ED-only care. The outcomes of this review were mortality at time point closest to 30 days, length of stay in the service (in minutes), and waiting time to see a doctor (in minutes).Data Collection And AnalysisWe followed the standard procedures of Cochrane Effective Practice and Organisation of Care for this review (https://epoc.cochrane.org/resources).Main ResultsWe identified a total of 5754 records in the search. Following assessment of 3609 de-duplicated records, none were found to be eligible for inclusion in this review.Authors' ConclusionsAt present there are no randomised controlled trials exploring the effects of acute assessment services on patient flow in hospital-based emergency departments compared to usual, ED-only care.Copyright © 2023 The Cochrane Collaboration. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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