Changes in low-acuity patient volume in an emergency department after launching a walk-in clinic.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

Unscheduled low-acuity care options are on the rise and are often expected to reduce emergency department (ED) visits. We opened an ED-staffed walk-in clinic (WIC) as an alternative care location for low-acuity patients at a time when ED visits exceeded facility capacity and the impending flu season was anticipated to increase visits further, and we assessed whether low-acuity ED patient visits decreased after opening the WIC.

Methods

In this retrospective cohort study, we compared patient and clinical visit characteristics of the ED and WIC patients and conducted interrupted time-series analyses to quantify the impact of the WIC on low-acuity ED patient visit volume and the trend.

Results

There were 27,211 low-acuity ED visits (22.7% of total ED visits), an

SUBMITTER: Kurian D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10361543 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature