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theses

The pediatric population accounts for more than 20 percent of total emergency department (ED) visits, and over half of those visits are for “nonurgent” reasons. Nonurgent refers to those conditions that can 1) be easily managed by a primary care provider and 2) withstand a delay of several hours without increasing the likelihood of an adverse outcome. Nonurgent visits are often imputed for soaring healthcare costs, longer wait times, and poorer quality of care for all patients.
Additionally, a nationwide shortage of child psychiatric specialists and outpatient resources have left families with no alternative but to turn to the ED for all their child’s mental health needs. Yet, more often than not, the best a hospital ED can do is cast out a poorly equipped and fragmented net. The scarcity of providers has been cited as the reason for extended lengths of stay, high recidivism patterns among mental health patients and for ED overcrowding.
The purpose of this research was to identify ED use for both the most common ED presentations, termed “nonurgent,” and for the mental health presentations to a particular children’s hospital in the Southwest. Descriptive epidemiology was used to describe ED use in terms of person, specifically looking at age, gender, race/ethnicity and insurance status; place, by geocoding the physical addresses of all visitors and time, by looking at visit history by month and year. The study design used was a retrospective chart review of all visits to the ED between January 1, 2011 and December 31, 2014. Two distinct analytical tools were used in this study. Statistical analysis system (SAS) was used to perform standard statistical analysis and geographic information systems (GIS), was used to geocode the residential addresses of all patients.

ETD_7440

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

doi:10.7282/t3-mcr4-vh44

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.