Evaluation of non-urgent visits to a busy urban emergency department

Abstract

Objectives: To identify the proportion of patients who were taken into the emergency room on the basis of legal regulations and non-urgent medical procedures. Methods: This prospective study was conducted in the Emergency Department, Toros State Hospital, Mersin, Turkey. Data were collected over 4 weeks (January 2011) and then analyzed using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov, Analysis of Variance, and Kruskal-Wallis H tests. Results: During the study period, 21,014 patients visited the Emergency Department. The applications were measured during a 3-shift schedule (08-16, 16-00, 00-08 hours). The total number of ordinary emergency admissions was 16,370. Of the total, 4,644 (22.1%) of the visits were evaluated as inappropriate. According to our study, inappropriate use of the emergency department was 51.1% more frequent during the 08-16 hours shift than the others. Conclusion: Inappropriate use of EDs with nonurgent applications makes it difficult to guarantee access for real emergency cases, decreases the readiness for care, and produces negative spillover effects on the quality of emergency services. Saudi Med J 2012; Vol. 33 (9): 967-972