Does Evaluation by a Physician at Triage Shorten Emergency Department Length of Stay?

One process change to mitigate the effect of emergency department (ED) overcrowding is to have a physician evaluate patients at triage. In a retrospective study of 66,609 adult patients who presented to an urban academic ED during a 23-month period, researchers compared ED length of stay (LOS) between matched groups of 11,000 patients who were and were not evaluated by a physician at triage. Patients were matched by propensity scores, which reflected demographic data, acuity, chief complaint, and ED census at the time of arrival. The role of the triage physician was to treat and release low-acuity patients and to initiate diagnostic testing for patients who required more evaluation.

Patients who were evaluated by a physician at triage had a …