SHM Converge Scientific Abstract ePoster Gallery-Are All Urgent Patient Needs in the Emergency Room Clinical?

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The document describes an emergency department initiative called the “Urgent Needs Program,” designed to address patients who are listed for hospital admission not because of an immediate clinical problem, but because of unsafe living situations or other safety concerns.<br /><br />The authors note that hospital admission can expose patients to significant risks such as delirium, functional decline, infections, pressure ulcers, and venous thromboembolism. At the same time, emergency physicians often face a difficult choice between admitting a patient to an unsafe home situation or exposing them to the harms of hospitalization.<br /><br />To solve this problem, the team developed and implemented a pathway to rapidly identify and manage these safety-related needs in the ED. The program aims to handle outpatient safety issues urgently, potentially avoiding unnecessary inpatient admission.<br /><br />The results suggest the intervention was effective: a significant number of patients who were originally considered for admission were instead discharged from the emergency department after their safety needs were addressed. The most common reasons for ED presentation were dementia, gait abnormality, and need for social services, with reported proportions of 35%, 39%, and 26%, respectively.<br /><br />Overall, the summary message is that not all urgent patient needs in the ER are purely clinical. Some patients need rapid social, functional, or safety interventions, and creating a structured pathway for these cases can reduce unnecessary admissions while better addressing patient needs.

Asset Subtitle

Iyad Kejo

Meta Tag

Author List Iyad Kejo, Jeffrey Ceresnak, Keron Lezama, William Southern

Category Innovations

Concept Emergency Department Urgent Needs Pathway

Concept Patient Safety

Concept Urgent Needs Program

Concept Hospital Admission

Concept Functional Decline

Distinguished Non-Finalist

Presenter Organization Montefiore Medical Center

Presenting Author Iyad Kejo

Track Patient Safety

Keywords

emergency department

urgent needs program

hospital admission

patient safety

unsafe living situation

dementia

gait abnormality

social services

unnecessary admission

outpatient safety intervention

Emergency Department Urgent Needs Pathway

Patient Safety

Urgent Needs Program

Hospital Admission

Functional Decline