Annals of emergency medicine
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Emergency department (ED) evaluations for syncope are common, representing 1.3 million annual US visits and $2 billion in related hospitalizations. Despite evidence supporting risk stratification and outpatient management, variation in syncope hospitalization rates persist. We sought to develop a new quality measure for very low-risk adult ED patients with syncope that could be applied to administrative data. ⋯ In summary, our novel syncope quality measure can assess variation in low-value hospitalizations for unexplained syncope. The application of this measure could improve the value of syncope care.