Patients who returned to an emergency department within seven days | HQCA Focus

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Patients who returned to an emergency department within seven days

Percentage of patients who were sent home from hospital, and then returned to an emergency department within seven days. (see data definition)

  • *Data courtesy of Alberta Health Services. Please note: Delivery of care measures exclude the remaining smaller hospitals because data is inconsistent at these hospitals.

What do you see?

  • Are there any trends over time at the hospital where you work or would be most likely to visit? Would some of these trends warrant looking at the reasons for return visits?
  • Are there differences in the number of returning patients between hospitals of the same type (e.g., Large Urban)?
  • What could be some of the sources of potentially avoidable emergency department visits?

Why is it meaningful?

  • Whether you’re a patient, provider, or health system administrator, thinking about this measure can start conversations and lead to solutions for improved quality of healthcare.
  • Do you see successes worth highlighting or opportunities for improvement?

Understanding "return visits to an emergency department within seven days"

After being sent home from the hospital, some patients may return to an emergency department (ED) in the days which follow. These return visits may be either planned or unplanned.

Unplanned visits to the ED can happen if a patients’ illness or injury gets worse. Some of these return visits may be appropriate, while others may represent an inefficient use of healthcare system resources.

The more patients returning to the ED, means more patients coming into the emergency department, which could impact the time to see an emergency doctor, as well as total length of stay in the ED.

Considerations when reviewing the results

  • Only visits to EDs are captured with this measure. Visits to other care venues (e.g. urgent care or community clinics) are not included.
  • Given that returns to the ED due to all causes are captured, it is possible that some patient return visits to the ED will be for a completely different health concern/episode of care. For example, a patient hospitalized due to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) may return home and soon after suffer an injury that requires emergency care services (e.g. a broken bone).

Alberta Quality Matrix for Health

The Health Quality Council of Alberta uses the Alberta Quality Matrix for Health as a way of organizing information and thinking around the complexity of the healthcare system. This measure can be used as input to assess hospital performance in these dimensions of quality: Acceptability, Appropriateness, Effectiveness, and Safety.

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