title: Chest pain units help EDs streamline care, boost throughput for low- to moderate-risk patients.
abstract: Hospitals that see a high volume of patients who present to the ED with chest pain are finding that they can expedite care by establishing a chest pain unit to evaluate the low- to moderate-risk patients who have normal initial electrocardiograms (EKG), but no other apparent conditions that can explain their symptoms. The directors of these units say they have trimmed what used to be a two- to three-day hospital stay to a 10- to 18-hour observation period, and patients are able to leave the hospital with a definitive diagnosis. In its first three weeks of operation, the chest pain ER at Shands Critical Care Center at the University of Florida in Gainesville, FL, helped the hospital reduce low- to moderate-risk admissions by two-thirds. Data on 30-day outcomes from the chest pain center at Providence, RI-based Rhode Island Hospital suggest that only three in every 1000 patients treated has had an adverse cardiovascular event following discharge. The director of the chest pain unit at Palmetto Health Richland in Columbia, SC, says screening and evaluation carried out in the unit have enabled providers to pick up cardiac problems in patients who would not have met the criteria for admission to the hospital in the past.
mesh_terms: D002637:Chest Pain; D017598:Efficiency, Organizational; D004636:Emergency Service, Hospital; D006801:Humans; D010360:Patient Transfer / Q000458:organization & administration*