The Effect of Emergency Department Crowding on Reassessment of Children With Critically Abnormal Vital Signs. (October 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Depinet, Holly E.; Iyer, Srikant B.; Hornung, Richard; Timm, Nathan L.; Byczkowski, Terri L.; Bonsu, Bema
• Is Part Of: Academic emergency medicine. Volume 21:Number 10(2014:Oct.)
• Page Start: 1116
• Page End: 1120
• Publication Date: 2014-10
• Subjects: Emergency medicine -- Periodicals; 616.02505
• DOI: 10.1111/acem.12478
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1069-6563

Abstract

<abstract abstract-type="main" id="acem12478-abs-0001"> <title>Abstract</title> <sec id="acem12478-sec-0001" sec-type="section"> <title>Objectives</title> <p>The objective was to determine whether several measures of emergency department (ED) crowding are associated with an important indicator of quality and safety: time to reevaluation of children with documented critically abnormal triage vital signs.</p> </sec> <sec id="acem12478-sec-0002" sec-type="section"> <title>Methods</title> <p>This was a retrospective cross‐sectional study of all patients with critically abnormal vital signs measured in triage over a 2.5‐year period (September 1, 2006, to May 1, 2009). Cox proportional hazard analysis was used to determine rate ratios for time to critically abnormal vital sign reassessment, when controlled for potential confounders.</p> </sec> <sec id="acem12478-sec-0003" sec-type="section"> <title>Results</title> <p>In this 2.5‐year sample, 9, 976 patients with critically abnormal vital signs in triage (representing 3.9% of 253, 408 visits) were placed in regular ED rooms with electronic alerts prompting vital sign reassessment after 1 hour. Overall, the mean time to reassessment was 84 minutes. The rate of vital sign reassessment was reduced by 31% for each additional 10 patients waiting for admission (adjusted odds ratio [OR] = 0.98; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.98 to 0.99), by 10% for every 10 patients in the lobby (adjusted OR = 0.94; 95% CI = 0.93 to 0.96), and by 6% for every additional 10 patients in the overall ED census (adjusted OR = 0.97; 95% CI = 0.97 to 0.98).</p> </sec> <sec id="acem12478-sec-0004" sec-type="section"> <title>Conclusions</title> <p>Emergency department crowding was associated with delay in the reassessment of critically abnormal vital signs in children; further work is needed to develop systems to mitigate these delays.</p> </sec> </abstract>