The International Crowding Measure in Emergency Departments accurately predicts clinicians' concerns about ED crowding, according to a study in the Emergency Medicine Journal.
Researchers tested the feasibility and validity of ICMED, an eight-point measure of ED crowding, in four EDs in England. Three violations of the measure had a sensitivity of 91.2 and a specificity of 100 for predicting ED crowding. In addition, ICMED predicted clinician concerns of ED crowding better than individual variables such as occupancy, according to the study.
Except for the "left before being seen" variable, the measure is feasible to collect in real time, the authors wrote.
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