Shutting down OR ventilation during off-duty periods does not appear to result in an unacceptably high particle count or microbial contamination of the OR air shortly after the system is restarted. Because substantial energy and cost savings are likely, this should be considered in hygienically safe heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems. However, normal ventilation should be established at least 30 minutes before surgical activity.
were 31,506 separate ED patient encounters during our study period. Of these 9.9% (95% CI 9.6 -10.3%) utilized the kiosk. There no statistical difference in median ED LOS for those who utilized the kiosk of 228 (IQR: 135-385.5) vs 231 (IQR: 135-379) minutes (P¼0.97). For those who used the kiosk, logistic regression demonstrated statistically significant (P<0.05) Odds Ratio (OR) for increasing level of acuity (OR ¼ 0.18 [0.03-0.47], African American race (OR ¼ 1.18 [1.08-1.29]), Male sex (0.77, [0.71-0.84]) and year of age (0.991 [0.989-0.993]).Conclusions: In our patient population, having a higher acuity level, a greater age in years, and being male reduced the odds of using the SCI kiosks. Being African American increased these odds. However, in our busy urban ED, our intervention did not change overall LOS. Future studies are needed to assess if our intervention affected smaller subsets of the ED LOS such as time to triage or time to provider. Further research could also focus on more advanced assessments of patient characteristics including kiosk use based on chief complaint. Understanding patient characteristics that lead to utilizing advanced technologies in the ED setting may allow for focused interventions and patient-level educational opportunities that could improve patient satisfaction and ED throughput.
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