Paed Child Healt Can
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Paed Child Healt Can · Jun 2013
Are wait times and length of stay in Alberta emergency departments for children's mental health meeting national benchmarks? Trends from 2002 to 2008.
To describe wait times, treatment times and length of stay (LOS) for pediatric mental health visits to emergency departments (EDs). ⋯ Most median ED wait times for pediatric mental health visits exceeded national recommendations, while the median LOS for all visits met recommendations. Lower-acuity visits had wait times that exceeded treatment times. Future research should explore whether longer wait times are associated with adverse outcomes, and whether current wait/treatment times are warranted to ensure that ED throughput is optimized.