BMJ quality & safety
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BMJ quality & safety · Jul 2016
Are reductions in emergency department length of stay associated with improvements in quality of care? A difference-in-differences analysis.
We sought to determine whether patients seen in hospitals who had reduced overall emergency department (ED) length of stay (LOS) in the 2 years following the introduction of the Ontario Emergency Room Wait Time Strategy were more likely to experience improvements in other measures of ED quality of care for three important conditions. ⋯ These results suggest that a policy approach that targets only reductions in ED LOS is not associated with broader improvements in selected quality measures. At the same time, there is no evidence that efforts to address crowding have a detrimental effect on quality of care.