Articles: hospital-emergency-service.
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Emergency departments (EDs) continue to struggle with overcrowding, increasing wait times, and a surge in patients with non-urgent conditions. Patients frequently choose the ED for non-emergent medical issues or injuries that could readily be handled in a primary care setting. We analyzed encounters in the ED at the Brooke Army Medical Center-the largest hospital in the Department of Defense-to determine the percentage of visits that could potentially be managed in a lower cost, appointment-based setting. ⋯ Over half of all ED visits in our dataset could be primary care eligible. Our findings suggest that our patient population may benefit from other on-demand and appointment-based healthcare delivery to decompress the ED.
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Head injuries are a leading cause of death and disability in children, accounting for numerous emergency department (ED) visits. It is unclear how the COVID-19 pandemic has influenced healthcare utilization for pediatric head injuries. We hypothesize that the proportion of ED visits attributable to head injury and severity will increase during the COVID-19 era. ⋯ Use of head CT imaging did not significantly change in the COVID-19 era (aOR=1.0, 95% CI 0.7 to 1.6). The proportion of ED visits and hospitalizations for head injury increased during the COVID-19 era. This could be due to changes in the level of supervision and risk exposures in the home that occurred during the pandemic, as well as differences in postinjury care, level of awareness regarding injury severity, and threshold for seeking care, all of which may have influenced pediatric healthcare utilization for head injuries.
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Emerg Med Australas · Aug 2022
Observational StudyRetrospective study of the prevalence and characteristics of adverse drug events in adults who present to an Australian emergency department.
To determine the burden, on the ED, of harm from unintentional adverse drug events (ADEs) in the community. ⋯ There is a high burden on emergency care because of unintended medication harm in the community. Interventions to reduce such harm are likely to require a co-ordinated primary, acute and public healthcare response. The high proportion of presentations with potential ADEs indicates opportunity for harm mitigation in the ED.
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Emerg Med Australas · Aug 2022
Is headache during pregnancy a higher risk for serious secondary headache cause? A HEAD study report.
Pregnancy is defined as a 'red flag' in headache assessment. We aimed to describe the prevalence and causes of serious secondary headache in pregnant ED patients. ⋯ Inclusion of pregnancy as a 'red flag' in ED headache assessment is not supported by these data.