The effect on hospital admission profiles of establishing an emergency department observation ward

Abstract

Objective: To determine the effect of establishing an emergency department observation ward (OW) on admission numbers, average length of stay (ALOS) for the entire hospital and overall bed days for conditions commonly treated in the OW. Setting: Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital (SCGH), Perth, a tertiary referral teaching hospital. Design: Retrospective analysis of routinely collected hospital data for the 10 most common diagnosis-related group (DRG) categories of patients discharged from the OW for the financial years 1995-96 to 1998-99. Comparison of these data with those for adult patients at the other Perth teaching hospitals over the same period. Main outcome measures: For patients in the 1..