Self-referred walk-in patients in the emergency department - who and why? Consultation determinants in a multicenter study of respiratory patients in Berlin, Germany
Holzinger, Felix, Oslislo, Sarah, Möckel, Martin, Schenk, Liane, Pigorsch, Mareen, and Heintze, Christoph (2020) Self-referred walk-in patients in the emergency department - who and why? Consultation determinants in a multicenter study of respiratory patients in Berlin, Germany. BMC Health Services Research, 20. 848.
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Abstract
Background: Emergency department (ED) consultations are on the rise, and frequently consultations by non-urgent patients have been held accountable. Self-referred walk-in (SRW) consulters supposedly represent a predominantly less urgent patient population. The EMACROSS study aimed to explore consultation determinants and motives in SRW patients with respiratory symptoms.
Methods: Multicenter survey of adult ED patients with respiratory complaints in eight emergency departments in central Berlin, Germany. Secondary hospital records data including diagnoses was additionally assessed. Characteristics of SRW and non-SRW patients were compared. Determinants of SRW consultation were evaluated by binary logistic regression. Consultation motives were analyzed descriptively. As a supplemental approach, network analysis (lasso-regularized mixed graphical model) was performed to explore connections between consultation determinants, consultation features and motives.
Results: Between June 2017 and November 2018, n = 472 participants were included, the median age was 55 years (range 18–96), 53.2% of patients were male and n = 185 cases (39.2%) were SRW consulters. The SRW group showed lower proportions of potentially severe (pneumonia and respiratory failure, p < 0.001, χ2 test) and chronic pulmonary conditions. Determinants of SRW consultation identified by logistic regression were younger age (p < 0.001), tertiary education (p = 0.032), being a first-generation migrant (p = 0.002) or tourist (p = 0.008), having no regular primary care provider (p = 0.036) and no chronic pulmonary illness (p = 0.017). The area under the curve (AUC) for the model was 0.79. Personal distress and access problems in ambulatory care were stated most frequently as consultation motives in the SRW group; network analysis showed the scarcity of associations between demographic and medical SRW determinants and motives triggering the actual decision to consult.
Conclusions: As to "who" consults, this study identified demographic and medical predictors of SRW utilization. The said markers seem only remotely connected to "why" people decide for SRW visits. To alleviate ED crowding by addressing frequent SRW consultation motives, interventions focused on the ability for symptom self-assessment and at better-accessible alternative care seem sensible.
| Item ID: | 66710 |
|---|---|
| Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
| ISSN: | 1472-6963 |
| Keywords: | Consultation determinants, Emergency department, Health care utilization, Respiratory conditions |
| Copyright Information: | © The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
| Funders: | Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), Projekt DEAL |
| Projects and Grants: | BMBF Grant 01GY1604 |
| Date Deposited: | 27 May 2021 02:09 |
| FoR Codes: | 32 BIOMEDICAL AND CLINICAL SCIENCES > 3202 Clinical sciences > 320207 Emergency medicine @ 100% |
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