Emergency Department Performance Indexes Before and After Establishment of Emergency Medicine.
BACKGROUND
Emergency department performance index (EPI) greatly influences the function of other hospital's units and patient satisfaction. Recently, the Iranian Ministry of Health has defined specific national EPI containing five indexes. In the present study the performance indexes of emergency department (ED) in one educational hospital has been assessed before and after establishment of emergency medicine.


METHODS
In the present cross-sectional study the ED of Shohadaye Tajrish Hospital, Tehran, Iran was assessed during one-year period from March 2012 to February 2013. The study was divided into two six-month periods of before and after establishment of emergency medicine. Five performance indexes including: the percentage of patients were disposed during 6-hour, leaved the ED in a 12-hour, had unsuccessful cardiopulmonary resuscitations (CPR), discharged against medical advice, and the mean time of triage were calculated using data of department of medical records on daily patients' files. Then, Mann-Whitney U test was used to make comparisons at P<0.05.


RESULTS
The average triage time decreased from 6.04 minutes in the first six months to 1.5 minutes in the second six months (P=0.06). The percentage of patients leaving the ED in a 12-hour decreased from 97.3% to 90.4% (P=0.004). However, the percentage of disposed patients during 6-hour (P=0.2), unsuccessful CPR (P=0.34) and discharged against medical advice (P=0.42) did not differ between the two periods.


CONCLUSIONS
It seems that establishment of emergency medicine could be able to improve ED performances indexes such as time to triage and leave in a 12-hour period.
Department of Emergency Medicine, Shohadaye Tajrish Hospital, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
Behrooz
B
Hashemi
Department of Emergency Medicine, Shohadaye Tajrish Hospital, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
Alireza
A
Baratloo
Department of Emergency Medicine, Shohadaye Tajrish Hospital, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
Farhad
F
Rahmati
Department of Emergency Medicine, Shohadaye Tajrish Hospital, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
Mohammad Mehdi
MM
Forouzanfar
Department of Emergency Medicine, Shohadaye Tajrish Hospital, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
Maryam
M
Motamedi
Department of Emergency Medicine, Shohadaye Tajrish Hospital, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
Saeed
S
Safari
Emergency department performance index; emergency medicine; patient discharge; triage