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Introduction: Lactate levels are increasingly used to risk stratify emergency department (ED) patients with and without infection. Whether a serum lactate provides similar prognostic value across diseases is not fully elucidated. This study assesses the prognostic value of serum lactate in ED patients with and without infection to both report and compare relative predictive value across etiologies. Methods: We conducted a prospective, observational study of ED patients displaying abnormal vital signs (AVS) (heart rate ≥130 bpm, respiratory rate ≥24 bpm, shock index ≥1, and/or systolic blood pressure 4.0mmol/L. Trended stratified lactate levels were associated with deterioration for both infected (p 4mmol/L was an independent predictor of deterioration for patients with infection (OR 4.8, 95% CI: 1.7 – 14.1) and without infection (OR 4.4, 1.7 – 11.5). Conclusion: Lactate levels can risk stratify patients with AVS who have increased risk of adverse outcomes regardless of infection status. [West J Emerg Med. 2017;18(2)258-266.]

Introduction: In an age of increasing scrutiny of each hospital admission, emergency department (ED) observation has been identified as a low-cost alternative. Prior studies have shown admission rates for syncope in the United States to be as high as 70%. However, the safety and utility of substituting ED observation unit (EDOU) syncope management has not been well studied. The objective of this study was to evaluate the safety of EDOU for the management of patients presenting to the ED with syncope and its efficacy in reducing hospital admissions. Methods: This was a prospective before-and-after cohort study of consecutive patients presenting with syncope who were seen in an urban ED and were either admitted to the hospital, discharged, or placed in the EDOU. We first performed an observation study of syncope management and then implemented an ED observation-based management pathway. We identified critical interventions and 30-day outcomes. We compared proportions of admissions and adverse events rates with a chi-squared or Fisher’s exact test. Results: In the “before” phase, 570 patients were enrolled, with 334 (59%) admitted and 27 (5%) placed in the EDOU; 3% of patients discharged from the ED had critical interventions within 30 days and 10% returned. After the management pathway was introduced, 489 patients were enrolled; 34% (p

Introduction: The value of using patient- and physician-identified quality assurance (QA) issues in emergency medicine remains poorly characterized as a marker for emergency department (ED) QA. The objective of this study was to determine whether evaluation of patient and physician concerns is useful for identifying medical errors resulting in either an adverse event or a near-miss event. Methods: We conducted a retrospective, observational cohort study of consecutive patients presenting between January 2008 and December 2014 to an urban, tertiary care academic medical center ED with an electronic error reporting system that allows physicians to identify QA issues for review. In our system, both patient and physician concerns are reviewed by physician evaluators not involved with the patients’ care to determine if a QA issue exists. If a potential QA issue is present, it is referred to a 20-member QA committee of emergency physicians and nurses who make a final determination as to whether or not an error or adverse event occurred. Results: We identified 570 concerns within a database of 383,419 ED presentations, of which 33 were patient-generated and 537 were physician-generated. Out of the 570 reports, a preventable adverse event was detected in 3.0% of cases (95% CI = [1.52-4.28]). Further analysis revealed that 9.1% (95% CI = [2-24]) of patient complaints correlated to preventable errors leading to an adverse event. In contrast, 2.6% (95% CI = [2-4]) of QA concerns reported by a physician alone were found to be due to preventable medical errors leading to an adverse event (p=0.069). Near-miss events (errors without adverse outcome) trended towards more accurate reporting by physicians, with medical error found in 12.1% of reported cases (95% CI = [10-15]) versus 9.1% of those reported by patients (95% CI = [2- 24] p=0.079). Adverse events in general that were not deemed to be due to preventable medical error were found in 12.1% of patient complaints (95% CI = [3-28]) and in 5.8% of physician QA concerns (95% CI = [4-8]). Conclusion: Screening and systemized evaluation of ED patient and physician complaints may be an underutilized QA tool. Patient complaints demonstrated a trend to identify medical errors that result in preventable adverse events, while physician QA concerns may be more likely to uncover a near miss.

Introduction: Strategies to identify high-risk emergency department (ED) patients often use markedly abnormal vital signs and serum lactate levels. Risk stratifying such patients without using the presence of shock is challenging. The objective of the study is to identify independent predictors of in-hospital adverse outcomes in ED patients with abnormal vital signs or lactate levels, but who are not in shock. Methods: We performed a prospective observational study of patients with abnormal vital signs or lactate level defined as heart rate ≥130 beats/min, respiratory rate ≥24 breaths/min, shock index ≥1, systolic blood pressure 4.0mmol/L (OR 5.1, 95% CI [2.1–12.2]), age ≥80 yrs (OR 1.9, CI [1.0–3.7]), bicarbonate