Improving process quality for pediatric emergency department

Abstract

A process and flow control management scheme based on patient group characteristics may improve service quality and lead to a better patient satisfaction in ED.

The Australian public's preferences for emergency care alternatives and the influence of the presenting context: a discrete choice experiment

“…These findings are to be expected given the literature on social constructions of childhood and heightened notions of vulnerability, 47 48 which in part have led to the establishment of dedicated paediatric ED and/or treatment areas within ED. 6 7 Indeed, triage categories reflect an urgency rather than a complexity scale and clinicians may also assign different urgency ratings to similar presenting problems in different patients. 12 Further, presentations involving skin rashes are also recognised as being particularly challenging to assess.…”

“…The preferences elicited for the ‘GP-type scenarios’ suggest the Australian public generally prefer to be treated at their local GP clinic in these circumstances. However, other doctor-led models, including integration of GP clinics within ED, extended hours of GP cooperatives and in-home care, 11 45 and redesigning patient flow processes (eg, fast-track streams for chronic-disease-related issues) 3 5 6 12 13 51 could gain public acceptance in the future.…”

“…To increase the realism of scenarios, an opt out option was included for each choice set whereby participants could choose to delay accessing care for 24 h to see if their condition improved. 6 36 For each block, one choice set was repeated as a consistency check so as to provide an indication of data quality; however, responses to the repeat choice set were excluded from the preference models. 37 A sample choice profile is presented in table 1 .…”