A significant proportion of emergency room visits for non-urgent conditions result in the same kind of treatment that many urgent conditions receive, according to a JAMA Internal Medicine study.
When researchers analyzed the primary symptoms reported in non-urgent ER visits, they found that six of the main 10 overlap with symptoms associated with urgent visits, including abdominal pain, headache and chest pain, among others. It may be that both patients and providers need to do more diagnostic work before administering treatment in non-urgent emergency department visits.
"[T]o some degree, our findings indicate that either patients or healthcare professionals do entertain a degree of uncertainty that requires further evaluation before diagnosis," they wrote. "Our findings highlight the lack of certainty of non-urgent status even when it is determined prospectively by a provider at triage and suggest that caution must be taken when using triage scores beyond their intended purpose."