Overcrowding in emergency department: a comparison between indexes

Abstract

The overcrowding of the Emergency Department (ED) represents one of the main problems to be faced with the aim to enhance the services offered in emergency situations and their quality. As a consequence, to assist the patients and the professionals involved, the hospital structures must put in place corrective and preventive actions. Overcrowding has a variety of effects, including poor care and longer hospital stays; consequently, mortality rises and so does the average length of hospitalization in intensive care units. A variety of indices have been exploited in the literature to assess the ED congestion. In this work a comparison between the EDWIN Index and the NEDOCS one was made in order to evaluate their effectiveness.