Abstract: Background: By reviewing the data of the registration in emergency department of Abha Maternity Children hospital (AMCH) in one year you will find a total number of emergency visits exceeding 120,000 cases per year, Only 12,000 of them needed admission, that gave the idea that majority of cases treated in emergency departments are of minor non urgent nature which can be treated in primary health care clinic (PHCC) instead of causing the unneeded overcrowding and overutilization of the limited resources in emergency and will lead to delay in picking up and treating the real emergencies , so this study was designed to investigate the reasons lead to this problem and try to prove that improvement of PHCC services and population awareness about it and also that health insurance are key solution of this problem.
Methods: Questionnaire based cross-sectional study on group of 300 patients, male & female of different ages & nationalities who visited the emergency department with non-emergency reasons in Aseer region. To identify reasons of overutilization of emergency department by non-emergency cases in Assir Region & why they are not going to primary health care centers (PHCC). Inclusion criteria depends on the Canadian Triage Acuity Scale (CTAS) we included in the study cases presented to emergency department and triaged as level 4 and 5, and excluded levels 1,2 and 3. Questionnaire is composed of twenty eight direct questions investigating all the hypothesized causes and was filled up by 6th year medical students of King-Khalid University (KKU)-Abha and analyzed the date & results by SPSS & R statistic programs and Chi-Square test, under the supervision of the principle investigator the Consultant and Head department of Pediatric Emergency Medicine in AMCH.
Keywords: PHCC services, ED, AMCH.
Title: Overutilization of Emergency Department by non-emergent cases in Aseer Region in Saudi Arabia
Author: Almalki AS, Alsayeri FS, Alsharani AA, Aseri AJ, Alqatani RM, Algarni AM, Alzahrani B
International Journal of Healthcare Sciences
ISSN 2348-5728 (Online)
Research Publish Journals
