Surgical Assessment Units: The Key to More Efficient Emergency Surgical Provision and Admissions?
| Autor: | Ashish Rohatgi, Stefano Andreani, Fiona G. M. Taylor, Matthew G Reeds |
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| Rok vydání: | 2019 |
| Předmět: |
Complete data
Health (social science) Leadership and Management Cost-Benefit Analysis MEDLINE 03 medical and health sciences 0302 clinical medicine Emergency surgery Patient experience Medicine Humans 030212 general & internal medicine Care Planning Emergency Treatment Referral and Consultation Cost–benefit analysis business.industry 030503 health policy & services Health Policy Emergency department medicine.disease Organizational Innovation Patient Discharge Cost savings General Surgery Hospital admission Medical emergency 0305 other medical science business Emergency Service Hospital Surgery Department Hospital |
| Zdroj: | Quality management in health care. 29(1) |
| ISSN: | 1550-5154 |
| Popis: | Background Hospitals establish surgical assessment units to promote efficiency and improve patient experience. Surgical assessment units are believed to reduce unnecessary admissions. We evaluated a hospital's on-call surgery service without this facility to determine benefits of implementation. Methods All emergency surgery referrals made over a 3-month period were recorded, including whether the patient was immediately discharged directly from emergency surgery. Data collection was undertaken by each surgical firm on-call. Immediate discharges were classed as patients not admitted to the hospital overnight (regardless of whether the patient had outpatient follow-up planned). Results Nine hundred eighty-four referrals were identified. Seven hundred ninety-three referrals had complete data and therefore were included for analysis. Of these, 349 patients (44.0% of referrals) were immediately discharged from emergency surgery, thereby preventing unnecessary admissions (a high proportion of surgical referrals not requiring hospital admission). This improves hospital efficiency, cost savings, and patient experience. Immediate discharge was less frequent and more difficult to accomplish if patients were initially assessed on wards (instead of in the emergency department). This is likely due to patients' perceptions that admission was required when transferred from emergency department to a ward. Conclusions Establishment of surgical assessment units has multiple potential benefits to patients, hospitals and clinicians. Appropriateness of surgical assessment unit implementation by every hospital ought to be evaluated. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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