Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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Multicenter Study
Characterizing waiting room time, treatment time, and boarding time in the emergency department using quantile regression.
The objective was to characterize service completion times by patient, clinical, temporal, and crowding factors for different phases of emergency care using quantile regression (QR). ⋯ Service completion times varied significantly across the four academic EDs. QR proved to be a useful method for estimating the service completion experience of not only typical ED patients, but also the experience of those who waited much shorter or longer. Building accurate models of ED service completion times is a critical first step needed to identify barriers to patient flow, begin the process of reengineering the system to reduce variability, and improve the timeliness of care provided.
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Multicenter Study
The effect of emergency department crowding on length of stay and medication treatment times in discharged patients with acute asthma.
This study sought to determine if emergency department (ED) crowding was associated with longer ED length of stay (LOS) and time to ordering medications (nebulizers and steroids) in patients treated and discharged with acute asthma and to study how delays in ordering may affect the relationship between ED crowding and ED LOS. ⋯ Emergency department crowding is associated with longer ED LOS (by more than 1 hour) in patients who ultimately get discharged with asthma flares. Some but not all of longer LOS during crowded times is explained by delays in ordering asthma medications.