Interventions Intended to Alleviate Emergency Department Overcrowding: CADTH Horizon Scan
Emergency department (ED) overcrowding is a known issue in Canada that puts patients’ lives and health at risk when treatment needs within the ED exceed the resources required to address them. The causes and consequences of ED overcrowding are complex, varied, and extend beyond the ED.- Left unchecked, ED overcrowding contributes to a deteriorating standard of care as staff become overworked and burned out., This CADTH Horizon Scan of 87 new and emerging interventions intended to alleviated ED overcrowding complements CADTH’s Emergency Department Overcrowding: An Environmental Scan of Contributing Factors and a Summary of Systematic Review Evidence on Interventions.
ParallelED-A novel screening and referral intervention using emergency department wait times to identify and address unmet social needs
People arriving at the emergency department (ED) often have unmet health-related social needs (HRSN). This study, published in the Journal of the American College of Emergency Physicians Open, implemented an intervention that used undergraduate student volunteers to screen patients in the ED waiting room (WR) for unmet social drivers of health and subsequently referred patients to community resources.
Overcrowding in emergency departments: an overview of reviews describing global solutions and their outcomes
The problem of overcrowding in emergency departments has emerged as a global public health concern, and several healthcare agencies have addressed the issue and proposed possible solutions at each level of emergency care. There is no current literature summarising the extensive research on interventions and solutions, thus there is a need for data synthesis to inform policymakers in this field. The aim of this overview, published in Internal and Emergency Medicine, was to summarise the interventions at each level of emergency care: input, throughput, and output.