Articles: emergency-services.
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Multicenter Study
Modeling the emergency ambulance pass-by of small rural hospitals in Victoria, Australia.
Many small rural hospitals struggle to attract sufficient numbers of suitable patients. Inadequate patient throughput threatens the viability of these hospitals and, consequently, the financial, physical, and social well-being of the whole community. Anecdotal evidence suggests that many emergency ambulance patients are routinely taken past their local small rural hospital to the area's major receiving hospital. ⋯ If some patients are being transported directly to the major receiving hospital because paramedics are considering their own time commitments when making patient transport decisions, this could have revenue implications for rural hospitals. Attracting appropriate local ambulance patients to the smaller hospitals may provide an income source that is currently lost to the crowded major receiving hospital's emergency department.
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Multicenter Study Comparative Study
Attitudes and judgment of emergency physicians in the management of patients with acute headache.
There is little evidence guiding physicians in the evaluation of acute headache to rule out nontraumatic subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH). The authors assessed emergency physicians in: 1) their pretest accuracy for predicting SAH, 2) their comfort with not ordering either head computed tomography (CT) or lumbar puncture (LP) in patients with acute headache, and 3) their comfort with not ordering head CT before performing LP in patients with acute headache. ⋯ Physicians were able to moderately discriminate SAH from other causes of headache before diagnostic testing.
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Multicenter Study
Re-utilization outcomes and costs of minor acute illness treated at family physician offices, walk-in clinics, and emergency departments.
To examine factors associated with re-utilization of health services and to estimate and compare costs of treatment for minor acute illnesses in family physicians' offices (FPOs), walk-in clinics (WICs), and emergency departments (EDs). ⋯ Both re-utilization rates and costs are higher for those seeking care in EDs for minor acute illness. Patient-centred care, an important feature of health care encounters regardless of setting, can reduce re-utilization rates.
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Multicenter Study
A multicenter study of depression among emergency department patients.
The authors sought to determine the 12-month prevalence of depression among emergency department (ED) patients using a single-question screen. ⋯ A 30% 12-month prevalence of depression among ED patients was found. Depressed patients had a distinct sociodemographic and health profile. In the future, awareness of risk factors for depression in the ED setting and use of simple screening instruments could aid in the recognition of depression, with subsequent referral to mental health services.
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Psychiatrische Praxis · Nov 2004
Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study Comparative Study Clinical Trial[Acute psychiatric day hospital treatment: is the effectiveness of this treatment approach still questionable?].
Currently, there is still a severe lack of methodologically sound empirical studies on acute psychiatric day hospital treatment in German-speaking countries that analyse the effectiveness of this increasingly important mode of service provision. ⋯ For the first time in German-speaking countries, this study provides evidence for the effectiveness of acute day hospital treatment as compared to conventional inpatient treatment. If detailed eligibility criteria for patients are used as defined here, approximately 30 % of the general psychiatric patients in need of acute hospital-based treatment may be cared for in this special mode of day hospital service provision.