Too few emergency department quality measurements, and a shortage of quality data are holding back emergency departments from potential improvements in quality of care, according to an article in Health Affairs.
Most emergency department quality measurements fall into three main arenas: wait times, length of stay and heart attack care.
There are, however, a number of challenges to accurately collecting and measuring emergency department quality data. For example, common complaints such as chest pain are more difficult to measure because they cannot be categorized in the same way as formal diagnoses, such as heart attacks, in the International Classification of Disease. Additionally, emergency department care involves many teams and departments, so it is difficult to distinguish whether performance attribution for quality and clinical measures goes to the emergency medical service team, an individual physician or the emergency department unit as a whole.
The authors suggest increasing the number of emergency department quality measurements on effectiveness and value of care, such as efficient resource use and diagnostic accuracy, can help increase emergency department care quality.
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