Effectiveness of clinical criteria in directing patient flow from the emergency department to a medical assessment unit in Queensland, Australia: a retrospective chart review of hospital administrative data

Table 1 Comparison of study hospitals with Australian and Queensland principal referral hospitals on four key hospital indicators (2016–2017)

	Australia	Study Hospital^a
Hospital Indicators	Principal referral hospitals^b (n = 29)	Principal referral hospital
Average acute weighted separations (range)^c	74,631 (43,006-108986)	77,543
Emergency department presentations (range)	61,072 (34,645 − 117,737)	76,533
Average hospital length of stay in days (range)^d	3.5 (2.5–4.7)	2.9

^aSource: internal study site data
^bPrincipal referral hospitals provide a very broad range of services, including some very sophisticated services, and have very large patient volumes. Most include an intensive care unit, a cardiac surgery unit, a neurosurgery unit, an infectious diseases unit and a 24-hour emergency department.
^cSeparations are an episode of care for an admitted patient, which can be a total hospital stay (from admission to discharge, transfer or death) or a portion of a hospital stay beginning or ending in a change of type of care (for example, from acute care to rehabilitation); it reflects admitted patient activity.
^dThe length of stay of an overnight patient is calculated by subtracting the date the patient is admitted from the date of separation and deducting days the patient was on leave.

ISSN: 1472-6963