Articles: emergency-medicine.
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Our aim was to compare Health Link utilization in urban and rural Alberta by metrics relevant to the ED. ⋯ This study on Health Link describes how tele-health can often triage higher acuity patients to appropriately receive ED level care, which may be important for future development of health care and ED infrastructure.
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Clinical Trial
Clinical prediction models for serious infections in children: external validation in ambulatory care.
Early distinction between mild and serious infections (SI) is challenging in children in ambulatory care. Clinical prediction models (CPMs), developed to aid physicians in clinical decision-making, require broad external validation before clinical use. We aimed to externally validate four CPMs, developed in emergency departments, in ambulatory care. ⋯ Feverkidstool and the Craig model show good discriminative ability for predicting SBI and a potential for early recognition of SBI, confirming good external validity in a low prevalence setting of SBI. The SBI score and PAWS showed poor diagnostic performance.
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Emerg Med Australas · Apr 2023
Potential to be more effective: reduction in lower urgency emergency department presentations during the COVID-19 period in New South Wales, Australia.
Diverting lower urgency ED presentations to more suitable healthcare is a key goal of several healthcare systems. During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, there was a substantial drop in ED presentations in New South Wales (NSW), potentially because of lower risk of illness and injury through social restrictions, or ED avoidance for lower urgent care. The present study aimed to better understand the impact of social restrictions during the pandemic on ED presentations, to inform potential shifts to alternative modes of care in emergency medicine. ⋯ This finding suggests that reducing lower urgency ED presentation beyond the COVID-19 pandemic maybe feasible, by supporting alternative, more appropriate sources of care.