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The most commonly cited cause of emergency department crowding is high inpatient census, but most research on ED crowding has focused on general or adult hospitals, and little is known about this issue in pediatric hospitals. In a retrospective cross-sectional analysis, these authors analyzed the relation between inpatient occupancy rates and ED throughput at a single tertiary care pediatric hospital in Boston during 2006. ED length of stay was the primary outcome measure of ED throughput; secondary measures were the percentage of patients who left without being seen and the percentage of patients who were treated in a hallway space.
Every incremental 5% increase in inpatient census at or above 80% was associated with an increase in ED lengt…