Using clinical indicators in emergency medicine: documenting performance improvements to justify increased resource allocation.

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: To demonstrate how emergency department triage scale and thrombolysis indicator data can be used to document the impact of a substantial increase in resource allocation. METHODS: Descriptive study in an emergency department of an adult tertiary hospital in Perth, Australia during similar periods of the year both before and after a substantial increase in emergency department staff, equipment, and system resources. The study group comprised a total of 11,048 emergency department attendances and all cases of emergency department initiated thrombolysis or acute angioplasty. Outcome was measured using numbers seen and percentage seen within indicator threshold time together with admi..