Unseen patterns of preventable emergency care: Emergency department visits for ambulatory care sensitive conditions.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

Admissions for ambulatory care sensitive conditions (ACSCs) are often used to measure potentially preventable emergency care. Visits to emergency departments with ACSCs may also be preventable care but are excluded from such measures if patients are not admitted. We established the extent and composition of this preventable emergency care.

Methods

We analysed 1,505,979 emergency department visits (5% of the national total) between 1 April 2015 and 31 March 2017 at six hospital Trusts in England, using International Classification of Diseases diagnostic coding. We calculated the number of visits for each ACSC and examined the proportions of these visits that did not result in admission by condition and patient characteristics.

Results

11.1% of emergency depar

SUBMITTER: Parkinson B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9277334 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature