• Ann Emerg Med · Nov 2024

    Changes in Behavioral Health Visits, Operations, and Boarding in a Pediatric Emergency Department.

    • Joel D Hudgins, Michael C Monuteaux, Caitlin Kent, Rebekah Mannix, Andrew Miller, Ashley Marchese, and Jason Levy.
    • Department of Emergency Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA; Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA; Division of Emergency Medicine, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA. Electronic address: joel.hudgins@childrens.harvard.edu.
    • Ann Emerg Med. 2024 Nov 26.

    Study ObjectiveOver the past decade, there has been a dramatic increase in pediatric emergency department (PED) visits seeking mental and behavioral health care. We aimed to determine the relationship between hours of care devoted to patients with mental and behavioral health complaints and markers of PED throughput and timeliness.MethodsWe performed a retrospective, single-center, cross-sectional study of PED encounters between 2010 and 2022. We reported effect of care for patients with mental and behavioral health complaints on operational metrics, including 4 throughput metrics and 3 care metrics (eg, vital signs within 30 minutes of arrival or left without being seen rates). We estimated a series of negative binomial regression models with the monthly count of the given metric as the dependent variable and monthly ED volume as the offset.ResultsWe included a total of 720,914 visits over the study period, of which 22,901 (3.2%) were mental and behavioral health complaints. The total number of mental and behavioral health visits increased over the study period, from 1,113 in 2010 to 2,554 in 2021, whereas the median monthly behavioral health care hours showed a 1,483% increase. All outcomes worsened as behavioral health care hours increased in both operational and care categories.ConclusionIn our single-center study, the increase in mental and behavioral health visits and hours of care was associated with significantly worsened PED throughput and timeliness of care metrics. This relationship highlights the challenges that PEDs face in caring for mental and behavioral health patients while simultaneously providing high-quality care to patients with acute nonmental and behavioral health emergencies.Copyright © 2024 American College of Emergency Physicians. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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