Healthcare Areas

When a resident is admitted to the hospital, also referred to as acute care, from the emergency department, it means that their condition is too unstable for them to be treated in the emergency department and returned safely to their site. Admission to hospital will depend on the healthcare needs of the resident and will occur if a resident requires treatments and services that can only be provided by an acute care hospital.

When thinking about the number of residents admitted to hospital from the emergency department, providers and leaders can consider a number of things to better understand and improve these results. Some questions they could ask before taking action include:

• What are the some of the common reasons that result in hospital admissions for designated supportive living and long term care residents? Of these reasons, which conditions could have been better managed at a site to avoid admission to hospital?
• What types of resources and supports do sites require to ensure, as much as possible, that use of emergency departments and acute care is appropriate?

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 long term care’s performance in these dimensions of quality: Acceptability, Appropriateness, Effectiveness, and Efficiency.

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