BackgroundEmergency departments handle a large proportion of acute patients. In 2007, it was recommended centralizing the Danish healthcare system and establishing emergency departments as the main common entrance for emergency patients. Since this reorganization, few studies describing the emergency patient population in this new setting have been carried out and none describing diagnoses and mortality. Hence, we aimed to investigate diagnoses and 1- and 30-day mortality of patients in the emergency departments in the North Denmark Region during 2014–2016.MethodsPopulation-based historic cohort study in the North Denmark Region (580,000 inhabitants) of patients with contact to emergency departments during 2014–2016. The study included patients who were referred by general practitioners (daytime and out-of-hours), by emergency medical services or who were self-referred.Primary diagnoses (ICD-10) were retrieved from the regional Patient Administrative System. For non-specific diagnoses (ICD-10 chapter ‘Symptoms and signs’ and ‘Other factors’), we searched the same hospital stay for a specific diagnosis and used this, if one was given. We performed descriptive analysis reporting distribution and frequency of diagnoses. Moreover, 1- and 30-day mortality rate estimates were performed using the Kaplan-Meier estimator.ResultsWe included 290,590 patient contacts corresponding to 166 ED visits per 1000 inhabitants per year. The three most frequent ICD-10 chapters used were ‘Injuries and poisoning’ (38.3% n = 111,274), ‘Symptoms and signs’ (16.1% n = 46,852) and ‘Other factors’ (14.52% n = 42,195). Mortality at day 30 (95% confidence intervals) for these chapters were 0.86% (0.81–0.92), 3.95% (3.78–4.13) and 2.84% (2.69–3.00), respectively.The highest 30-day mortality were within chapters ‘Neoplasms’ (14.22% (12.07–16.72)), ‘Endocrine diseases’ (8.95% (8.21–9.75)) and ‘Respiratory diseases’ (8.44% (8.02–8.88)).ConclusionsPatients in contact with the emergency department receive a wide range of diagnoses within all chapters of ICD-10, and one third of the diagnoses given are non-specific. Within the non-specific chapters, we found a 30-day mortality, surpassing several of the more organ specific ICD-10 chapters.Trial registrationObservational study - no trial registration was performed.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12913-018-3361-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Quality problem Patient care pathways should be organized according to the needs of the patients. This requires methods to assess whether the specific pathways ensure the right care for the right person at the right time and in the right setting. Initial assessment Previous investigations indicate that approximately 25% of the patients in Danish hospitals experience inappropriate elements in their care pathways. Choice of solution This study applied the Patient Inventory method to identify inappropriate elements in care pathways in 15 psychiatric in-patient wards in Denmark. Implementation The pathway for 201 patients was systematically evaluated by the clinical staff to identify whether the admission of the patient was avoidable, the hospitalization was unnecessarily prolonged, or if the patient could receive more relevant treatment elsewhere. A subsequent meeting between the clinical staff and management qualified the assessment and identified possible solutions to problems. Evaluation A total of 54 (26.9%) of the included patients were assessed to have inappropriate elements in their care pathways, some with more than one type, resulting in a total of 65 episodes. Eight of these episodes (13.1%) were admissions considered to be avoidable, 26 (42.2%) were unnecessary prolongation of admissions, and 31 (58.1%) were patients assessed to be able to receive more relevant care elsewhere. Lessons learned One out of four assessed patients admitted to a psychiatric ward was exposed to an inappropriate element in their care pathway. The Patient Inventory tool can assist in a structured dialogue between clinical staff and management to identify focus areas for improvement efforts.

Providing high quality care requires that patient care pathways are organized according to the needs of the patient. The organization of high-quality integrated patient care requires methods to assess ‘appropriateness’ of the care pathways to identify challenges in delivering the right procedure, for the right person at the right time and setting and with the most appropriate use of resources. There is a need for methods to assess appropriateness that can easily be implemented in daily clinical practice. The Patient Inventory method is such a method. Patient Inventory is a special type of audit that provides a ‘snapshot’ of the patient population in an entire hospital, a ward or another clinical unit. It maps the bed occupancy situation, as well as coordination, continuity and communication associated with the individual patient pathway. The aim is to identify inappropriate or wasteful events and to facilitate reflections on the underlying causes. These reflections are used to identify focus areas for quality improvement efforts. The method answers the question: ‘Is it the right patient in the right place at the right time, and is the correct pathway for the patient organized with the most appropriate use of resources?’ The aim of this method paper is to describe the background, definitions and methodologies for Patient Inventory, to offer a practical guidance for application of the method and to describe the current experiences with the method.

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