Social Determinants of Hallway Bed Use

Introduction:Hallway beds in the emergency department (ED) produce lower patient satisfaction and inferior care. We sought to determine whether socioeconomic factors influence which visits are assigned to hallway beds, independent of clinical characteristics at triage.Methods: We studied 332,919 visits, across 189,326 patients, to two academic EDs from 2013-2016. We estimated a logistic model of hallway bed assignment, conditioning on payor, demographics, triage acuity, chief complaint, patient visit frequency, and ED volume. Because payor is not generally known at the time of triage, we interpreted it as a proxy for other observable characteristics that may influence bed assignment. We estimated a Cox proportional hazards model of hallway bed assignment on length of stay.Results:Median patient age was 53. 54.0% of visits were by women. 42.1% of visits were paid primarily by private payors, 37.1% by Medicare,...
Source: Western Journal of Emergency Medicine - Category: Emergency Medicine Source Type: research