Causes of access block and Emergency department overcrowding in Beijing: a two year study / 中华急诊医学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To study the causes of emergency department (ED) overcrowding and access block in Beijing.Methods This was a multi-center cross sectional study.The studied cohort of patients included all ED visiting patients from 18 municipal teaching hospital EDs in Beijing from 2012 to 2013.Patient' s characteristics and medical care settings were analyzed.Results The urgent care cases accounted for only 4.6 ％ (71 224/1 554 387) of the emergency annual visits in 2012 and 5.5 ％ (88 190/1 615 571) in 2013.The total number of observation patients in EDs was 185 277 and 211 900 in 2012 and 2013 respectively,with an increase of 14.4 ％ (P ＜ 0.01).The total ED-admission inpatients only accounted for 2.97％ and 2.89 ％ of total annual visits in 2012 and 2013 respectively.The average time of ED-admission took 37.1 hours and 36.2 hours in 2012 and 2013 respectively.The average time of ED stay for observation was 4.9 days and 5.4 days in 2012 and 2013 respectively.Upper respiratory tract infection was the leading illness in annual visits.The leading cause of ED stay for observation was bedridden with pneumonia.Conclusions The ED settings in Beijing are different from other countries.The EDs actually assume the task of the clinic and ED service for 24 hours thereby made EDs terribly overcrowded.The main causes are large number of non-emergency patients visiting the ED and patients in the ED are difficulty to be hospitalized.Patients with end-stage disease and multiple organ failure stayed in the ED due to nursing home shortage.