The effect of a charted history of depression on emergency department triage and outcomes in patients with acute myocardial infarction.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Patients with acute myocardial infarction may have worse outcomes if they also have a history of depression. The early management of acute myocardial infarction is known to influence outcomes, and patients with a coexisting history of depression may be treated differently in the emergency department than those without one. Our goal was to determine whether having a charted history of depression was associated with a lower-priority emergency department triage score and worse performance on quality-of-care indices.

Methods

We conducted a retrospective population-based cohort analysis involving patients with acute myocardial infarction admitted to 96 acute care hospitals in the province of Ontario from April 2004 to March 2005. We calculated the adjusted odds of low-

SUBMITTER: Atzema CL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3071386 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature