Waiting on the Urine: The Impact of Delayed Urine Collection on Length of Stay in the Emergency Department.

ABSTRACT: Efficient collection of urinalyses (UAs) can be variable and is patient-dependent. Anecdotal delays in UA collection, compared with those for blood tests, can potentially lead to prolonged length of stay (LOS) and worsened throughput. Our study sought to analyze the impact of delayed urine collection on emergency department (ED) operations. This study is a retrospective cohort analysis of 38,640 discharged encounters with a urinalysis and 67,645 discharged encounters with a complete blood count (CBC). We captured order time, collection time, and disposition time. We calculated deciles of order-to-collection times for UA and CBC groups to visualize the data. We separated the groups into patients with UA only, CBC only, and both CBC + UA. We performed adjusted and unadjusted analyses using K

SUBMITTER: Arastehmanesh D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12361769 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature