Patients who need admission to hospitals but don’t require an operating room or critical care bed spend the most time in the emergency departments (ED) according to a new report. The study analysed 10 million emergency-room visits from the National Ambulatory Care Reporting System (NACRS). Some of the findings include:
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90 per cent of ED visits are resolved in 7.5 hours or less;
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Patients requiring admission spend about 4.7 times as long in the ED as those who are not admitted;
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One in ten patients who are admitted spend more than 28 hours in the ED first;
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One in ten seniors spent more than 31 hours in the ED before being admitted, compared with more than 25 hours for one in ten younger patients.
The original report was published by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) on October 7, 2014. For a copy of the report please contact CIHI.
