Impact of the four-hour National Emergency Access Target on 30 day mortality, access block and chronic emergency department overcrowding in Australian emergency departments

摘要

Objective: Previous research reported strong associations between ED overcrowding and mortality. We assessed the effect of the Four-Hour Rule (4HR) intervention (Western Australia (WA) 2009), then nationally rolled out as the National Emergency Access Target (Australia 2012) policy on mortality and patient flow.