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In a retrospective cohort study of patients who presented to a tertiary pediatric emergency department in Kentucky, investigators used recursive partitioning analysis to assess risk factors for premature departure (PD), defined as leaving without being seen or before provider-directed disposition. Patients were excluded if they had psychiatric complaints, were awaiting hospital admission, presented for laboratory or radiology studies only, were older than 21, or died. Among the 132,342 patients who met inclusion criteria during a 3-year period, the PD rate was 3.8%
The strongest predictor of PD was an average wait time before provider encounter for the previous 20 patients >110 minutes (PD rate 8.1%, vs. 1.7% for average wait time ≤110 minut…