Computer methods and programs in biomedicine
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Comput Methods Programs Biomed · Jun 2017
Predicting return visits to the emergency department for pediatric patients: Applying supervised learning techniques to the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database.
Return visits (RVs) to the emergency department (ED) consume medical resources and may represent a patient safety issue. The occurrence of unexpected RVs is considered a performance indicator for ED care quality. Because children are susceptible to medical errors and utilize considerable ED resources, knowing the factors that affect RVs in pediatric patients helps improve the quality of pediatric emergency care. ⋯ We identified several factors which are associated with RVs to the ED in pediatric patients. The knowledge of these factors may help assess risk of RVs in the ED and guide physicians to reevaluate and provide interventions to children belonging to the high risk groups before ED discharge.