A Systems Approach into Unnecessary Admissions and Readmissions in Emergency Departments

摘要

Crowding due to unnecessary admissions and readmissions has become a significant issue in Emergency Departments (EDs) across the United States (Jencks, 2010). The operational and financial consequences of this problem motivate the need to identify the factors that contribute to repeated visits to the EDs and to devise mitigation strategies to reduce unnecessary admissions and readmissions. Previous research has identified contributors to unnecessary admissions and readmissions to EDs (e.g., Booth & Hux, 2003) and presented strategies to reduce hospital readmissions (e.g., Kash et al., 2017), but qualitative methods, such as interviews, have not been commonly applied to investigate this problem; when done, the focus has been on physicians' perceptions (e.g., Longman et al., 2011).