Timeliness of Care at Freestanding Emergency Departments

Freestanding emergency departments (FREDs), have more imaging and laboratory capabilities than urgent care centers, but are not located within hospitals, so patients must be transferred for admission or urgent specialty procedures. In a retrospective, observational study, these authors compared timeliness of care between FREDs and hospital-based EDs for four time-sensitive conditions: chest pain, ST elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), sepsis, and asthma (there were too few acute ischemic strokes for analysis).

In one hospital system in Colorado from 2016 to 2017, there were approximately 82,500 adult patient visits to 19 FREDs and 276,000 visits to 5 hospital-based EDs. Median time to beta-agonist administration for asthma exacerbations…