• Am J Emerg Med · Mar 2012

    Review

    The role of full capacity protocols on mitigating overcrowding in EDs.

    • Cristina Villa-Roel, Xiaoyan Guo, Brian R Holroyd, Grant Innes, Lyndsey Wong, Maria Ospina, Michael Schull, Benjamin Vandermeer, Michael J Bullard, and Brian H Rowe.
    • Department of Emergency Medicine, School of Public Health, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2T4.
    • Am J Emerg Med. 2012 Mar 1;30(3):412-20.

    ObjectiveOvercrowding is an important issue facing many emergency departments (EDs). Access block (admitted patients occupying ED stretchers) is a leading contributor, and expeditious placement of admitted patients is an area of research interest. This review examined the effectiveness of full capacity protocols (FCPs) on mitigating ED overcrowding.MethodsA comprehensive literature search was undertaken to identify potentially relevant studies between 1966 and 2009. Intervention studies in which an FCP was used to influence ED/hospital length of stay and ED/hospital access block were included as a single program or part of a systemwide intervention. Two reviewers independently assessed citation relevance, inclusion, study quality, and extracted data; because of limited data, pooling was not undertaken.ResultsFrom 14 446 potentially relevant studies, 2 abstracts from the same comparative study were included. From 29 studies on systemwide intervention, 4 contained an FCP component. The included study was a single-center ED study using a before-after design; its methodological quality was rated as weak. One of the abstracts reported that an FCP was associated with less ED length of stay (5-hour reduction) when compared with the comparison period; the other reported that an FCP decreased ED and hospital access block (28% and 37% reduction, respectively). The ED triggers, format, and implementation of FCP protocols varied widely.ConclusionAlthough FCPs may be a promising alternative for overcrowded EDs, the available evidence upon which to support implementation of an FCP is limited. Additional efforts are required to improve the outcome reporting of FCP research using high-quality research methods.Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

      Pubmed     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…