Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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Review
Crowding Measures Associated With the Quality of Emergency Department Care: A Systematic Review.
Despite the substantial body of literature on emergency department (ED) crowding, to the best of our knowledge, there is no agreement on the measure or measures that should be used to quantify crowding. The objective of this systematic review was to identify existing measures of ED crowding that have been linked to quality of care as defined by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) quality domains (safe, effective, patient-centered, efficient, timely, and equitable). ⋯ The results of this review provide data on the association between ED crowding measures and quality of care. Three simple crowding measures have been linked to quality of care in multiple publications.