Trends in hospital emergency department use

Zaragoza Fernández M, Calvo Fernández C, Saad Saad T, Morán Portero FJ, San José Pizarro S, Hernández Arenillas P

Objectives: To describe trends in emergency department use at Hospital Virgen del

Puerto in Plasencia, in the province of Caceres, Spain, over a 10-year period from January

1, 1998 to December 31, 2007. To determine the percentage of emergencies that led to

admissions to this university hospital as well as the percentage of all admissions that

came from the emergency department.

Methods: Descriptive, observational, retrospective study using hospital admission

records to obtain the number of emergencies attended annually, the number of

emergency patients admitted, and the number of admissions ordered by emergency

department physicians. From the National Institute of Statistics, we also obtained the

same information for all of Spain and for each Spanish autonomous community.

Results: Visits to the hospital’s emergency department increased by 28.9% during the

10 years under study (annual increase, 2.8%). Increased use of the hospital was not

correlated with the change in population, which fell by 3.8% during the same period. As

visits to the hospital emergency department rose, the percentage of emergency patients

admitted fell by 4%. Likewise, the percentage of all admissions from the emergency

department also fell, by 9%. A similar pattern has been observed in Extremadura and in

Spain.

Conclusions: Hospital emergency department visits increased during the 10-year study

period, but the percentage of admissions ordered by emergency physicians decreased at

Hospital Virgen del Puerto and in Spain as a whole.

Calvo Fernández C, Hernández Arenillas P, Morán Portero FJ, Saad Saad T, San José Pizarro S, Zaragoza Fernández M