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Do you have the feeling your shifts are getting busier and there are more critical care patients boarding for longer times? To assess changes in critical care provided in emergency departments (EDs), researchers analyzed data from the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey for 2001 to 2009. Data for patients transferred to the operating room or catheterization lab were excluded.
Annual ED visits by critically ill patients increased from 1.2 to 2.2 million (79%), primarily in urban EDs. The proportion of all ED visits resulting in admission to a critical care unit increased from 0.9% to 1.6%. Median length of stay in the ED for critically ill patients jumped from 185 to 245 minutes, and one third had stays longer than 6 hours. The a…