Researchers from the University of Michigan Medical School analyzed data from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample. They evaluated mortality overall as well as for eight different diagnoses between 2005 and 2009.
The study found that patients admitted to a hospital after going to one of the nation’s busiest EDs had a 10 percent lower chance of dying than those who went to one of the least busy EDs. Also, people with sepsis had a 26 percent lower death rate at the busiest EDs as compared to the least busy and lung failure patients had a 22 percent lower death rate.
Keith Kocher, MD, the lead author of the study and a U-M Health System emergency physician, said that the difference in death rates may be due to a number of factors, such as the experience of the diagnosing emergency physicians, the availability of specialists as well as the skill and staffing levels of emergency and inpatient teams.
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