TY - JOUR
T1 - Interhospital transfers with wide variability in emergency general surgery
AU - Lauerman, Margaret H.
AU - Herrera, Anthony V.
AU - Albrecht, Jennifer S.
AU - Chen, Hegang H.
AU - Bruns, Brandon R.
AU - Tesoriero, Ronald B.
AU - Scalea, Thomas M.
AU - Diaz, Jose J.
N1 - Funding Information:
Funding: Jennifer S. Albrecht was awarded AHRQ grant 1K01HS024560. Anthony V. Herrera was training under the T32 training grant T32 AG00262.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Southeastern Surgical Congress. All rights reserved.
PY - 2019
Y1 - 2019
N2 - Interhospital transfer of emergency general surgery (EGS) patients is a common occurrence. Modern individual hospital practices for interhospital transfers have unknown variability. A retrospective review of the Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission database was undertaken from 2013 to 2015. EGS encounters were divided into three groups: encounters not transferred, encounters transferred from a hospital, and encounters transferred to a hospital. In total, 380,405 EGS encounters were identified, including 12,153 (3.2%) encounters transferred to a hospital, 10,163 (2.7%) encounters transferred from a hospital, and 358,089 (94.1%) encounters not transferred. For individual hospitals, percentage of encounters transferred to a hospital ranged from 0 to 30.05 per cent, encounters transferred from a hospital from 0.02 to 14.62 per cent, and encounters not transferred from 69.25 to 99.95 per cent of total encounters at individual hospitals. Percentage of encounters transferred from individual hospitals was inversely correlated with annual EGS hospital volume (P < 0.001, r 5 20.59), whereas percentage of encounters transferred to individual hospitals was directly correlated with annual EGS hospital volume (P < 0.001, r 5 0.51). Individual hospital practices for interhospital transfer of EGS patients have substantial variability. This is the first study to describe individual hospital interhospital transfer practices for EGS.
AB - Interhospital transfer of emergency general surgery (EGS) patients is a common occurrence. Modern individual hospital practices for interhospital transfers have unknown variability. A retrospective review of the Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission database was undertaken from 2013 to 2015. EGS encounters were divided into three groups: encounters not transferred, encounters transferred from a hospital, and encounters transferred to a hospital. In total, 380,405 EGS encounters were identified, including 12,153 (3.2%) encounters transferred to a hospital, 10,163 (2.7%) encounters transferred from a hospital, and 358,089 (94.1%) encounters not transferred. For individual hospitals, percentage of encounters transferred to a hospital ranged from 0 to 30.05 per cent, encounters transferred from a hospital from 0.02 to 14.62 per cent, and encounters not transferred from 69.25 to 99.95 per cent of total encounters at individual hospitals. Percentage of encounters transferred from individual hospitals was inversely correlated with annual EGS hospital volume (P < 0.001, r 5 20.59), whereas percentage of encounters transferred to individual hospitals was directly correlated with annual EGS hospital volume (P < 0.001, r 5 0.51). Individual hospital practices for interhospital transfer of EGS patients have substantial variability. This is the first study to describe individual hospital interhospital transfer practices for EGS.
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M3 - Review article
C2 - 31267899
AN - SCOPUS:85068929128
SN - 0003-1348
VL - 85
SP - 595
EP - 600
JO - American Surgeon
JF - American Surgeon
IS - 6
ER -