Overcrowding occurs when the number of patients requiring assistance exceeds the physical or personnel capacity of the hospital or emergency facilities one of the main challenges for emergency rooms in day-to-day operations. In many cases this imbalance is caused by the considerable number of inappropriate or in any case preventable accesses through the definition of specific clinical pathways.
The recent publication by some researchers of the APHEC Center investigates the issue of repeated access to the emergency services in the Liguria region, identifying the characteristics of the so-called “frequent and very frequent users”. The work is based on a policy-making logic and makes available a useful tool for implementing monitoring systems that alert general practitioners in the event of disproportionate use of first aid by their patients.
This tool can significantly improve policies to prevent the excessive (and sometimes inappropriate) use of emergency services.
Magazine: Population Health Metrics
Authors: Enrico di Bella, Luca Gandullia, Lucia Leporatti, Walter Locatelli, Marcello Montefiori, Luca Persico & Roberta Zanetti