Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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Alcohol use is a major and unpredictable driver of emergency department (ED) visits. Regional Twitter activity correlates ecologically with behavioral outcomes. No such correlation has been established in real time. ⋯ In a single state, a statistically significant relationship was observed between the hourly number of alcohol-related tweets and the hourly number of alcohol-related ED visits. Real-time Twitter monitoring may help predict alcohol-related surges in ED visits. Future studies should include larger numbers of EDs and natural language processing.
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The objective was to evaluate the effect of an emergency clinician-initiated "ED admission holding order set" on emergency department (ED) treatment times and length of stay (LOS). We further describe the impact of a performance improvement strategy with sequential plan-do-study-act (PDSA) cycles used to influence the primary outcome measures, ED LOS, and disposition decision to patient gone (DDTPG) time, for admitted patients. ⋯ We conclude that the use of emergency physician-initiated holding orders can lead to marked reductions in ED LOS for admitted patients. Continued improvement can be demonstrated with an effective performance improvement initiative designed to continuously optimize the process change.