Longitudinal Trends in Pediatric Return Visits to US Emergency Departments

This study aimed to evaluate trends in pediatric emergency department (ED) 72-hour return visits and factors associated with return visits. Methods We performed a cross-sectional study from 2002 to 2018 using the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, a complex survey of nonfederal US ED encounters. Patients 18 years or older were excluded. Our outcome of interest was 72-hour return ED encounter. We assessed changes in proportions of return visits over time using the Spearman rank-correlation test. We performed survey-weighted univariable and multivariable logistic regressions to identify factors associated with 72-hour return visit status. Results A total of 501 million (95% confidence interval [CI], 452–551 million) pediatric survey-weighted ED encounters occurred during the 17-year study period, of which 14,353,697 (3.2%; 95% CI, 2.7%–3.7%) represented 72-hour return visits. The proportion of pediatric ED return visits increased from 22.9 to 36.5 per 1000 pediatric encounters over the study period (ρ = 0.68, P
Source: Pediatric Emergency Care - Category: Emergency Medicine Tags: Original Articles Source Type: research