Frequent users of emergency departments and patient flow in Alberta and Ontario, Canada: an administrative data study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

This paper describes and compares patient flow characteristics of adult high system users (HSUs) and control groups in Alberta and Ontario emergency departments (EDs), Canada.

Methods

Annual cohorts of HSUs were created by identifying patients who made up the top 10% of ED users (by count of ED presentations) in the National Ambulatory Care Reporting System during 2011-2016. Random samples of patients not in the HSU groups were selected as controls. Presentation (e.g., acuity) and ED times (e.g., time to physician initial assessment [PIA], length of stay) data were extracted and described. The length of stay for 2015/2016 data was decomposed into stages and Cox models compared time between stages.

Results

There were 20,343,230 and 18,222,969 ED presentation

SUBMITTER: Chen A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7552544 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature