Annals of emergency medicine
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We aim to characterize the prevalence of financial conflicts of interest among emergency medicine journal editorial board members. ⋯ Nearly one third of US-based editors at leading emergency medicine journals had financial conflicts of interest, although only one journal publicly disclosed the presence of payments. Public disclosure of editorial board members' financial relationships with industry may allow for more transparency related to the content published in these journals.
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Telemedicine has potential to add value to the delivery of emergency care in rural emergency departments (EDs); however, previous work suggests that it may be underused. We seek to understand barriers to telemedicine implementation in rural EDs, and to describe characteristics of rural EDs that do and do not use telemedicine. ⋯ Among US rural EDs, cost is a commonly reported barrier that may be limiting the extent of telemedicine adoption.
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The effect of urgent cares on local emergency department (ED) patient volumes is presently unknown. In this paper, we aimed to assess the change in low-acuity ED utilization at 2 academic medical centers in relation to patient proximity to an affiliated urgent care. ⋯ Although further research is needed to assess the factors driving urgent care centers' variable influence on low-acuity ED use, these findings suggest that in similar settings urgent care center development may be an effective strategy for health systems hoping to decrease ED utilization for low-acuity conditions at academic medical centers.
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Existing comorbidity indices such as the Charlson comorbidity index are dated yet still widely used. This study derives and validates up-to-date comorbidity indices for hospital-admitted injury patients, specific to mortality outcomes. ⋯ The newly derived Australian Injury Comorbidity Indices, which are a binary representation of individual conditions associated with the outcome of interest, are useful in quantifying the effect of comorbidity among injury patients. They include a shorter list of conditions than existing indices such as the Charlson comorbidity index and Elixhauser comorbidity measure, are up to date, and consider the individual association of each condition over a summed score such as the Charlson comorbidity index. Indices that quantify the effect of comorbidities should consider the population, disease prevalence, and outcome of interest and require periodic updating.