Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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Emergency department (ED) triage prioritizes patients on the basis of the urgency of need for care. eTRIAGE is a Web-based triage decision support tool that is based on the Canadian Triage and Acuity Scale (CTAS), a five level triage system (CTAS 1 = resuscitation, CTAS 5 = nonurgent). ⋯ Acuity measured by eTRIAGE demonstrates excellent predictive validity for resource utilization and ED and hospital costs. Future research should focus on specific presenting complaints and targeted resources to more accurately assess eTRIAGE validity.
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Comparative Study
Comparison of laboratory values obtained by phlebotomy versus saline lock devices.
To assess the utility of a peripheral saline lock device (SLD) as an alternative to a second venipuncture for obtaining selected blood samples. ⋯ Aspirating blood via an SLD is an acceptable method of obtaining serial laboratory values in a group of stable, consenting adult ED patients.
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Admission process delays and other throughput inefficiencies are a leading cause of emergency department (ED) overcrowding, ambulance diversion, and patient elopements. Hospital capacity constraints reduce the number of treatment beds available to provide revenue-generating patient services. The objective of this study was to develop a practical method for quantifying the revenues that are potentially lost as a result of patient elopements and ambulance diversion. ⋯ Significant revenue may be foregone as a result of throughput delays that prevent the ED from utilizing its existing bed capacity for additional patient visits.
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Many emergency departments (EDs) have incorporated pain assessment scales in the medical record to improve compliance with the requirements of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. The authors conducted a pre-post trial investigating the effects of introducing a templated chart on the documentation of pain assessments and the provision of analgesia to ED patients. ⋯ Although documentation is improved with a templated chart, this improvement did not translate into improved patient care.
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To assess a point-of-care (POC) urine trypsinogen (UT) test for the diagnosis of pancreatitis in the emergency department (ED). ⋯ A POC UT screening test for pancreatitis in the ED compared favorably with plasma lipase and amylase levels. Future studies should be performed to explore whether this test in the ED setting has better clinical utility than plasma lipase or amylase.