The Prevalence and Costs of Non-urgent Visits to the Emergency Department of Public Hospitals Affiliated to Golestan University of Medical Sciences: A Descriptive Study

The emergency department (ED) of hospitals is of special importance due to receiving a high number of critically ill patients. This study aims to determine the prevalence and costs of non-urgent visits to the ED of public hospitals in Golestan, Iran.

This is a descriptive cross-sectional study. The study population includes all patients referred to the ED of hospitals affiliated to Golestan University of Medical Sciences in 2019. Patients who did not require emergency care and were in the fourth and fifth levels of triage were considered patients with non-urgent emergency needs. The cost of ED services were extracted from the hospital information system and using the top-down costing method. To describe the data, descriptive statistics were used in SPSS software, version 23.

Out of 519,204 patients referred to the EDs, 218,037 (42%) had non-urgent visits. Among these patients, 43% were male and 57% were female. The total cost of services for non-urgent ED visits was 43,856,887,000 Iranian Rials. For patients with the fourth level of triage, it was 42,094,000,000 Iranian Rials, and for those with the fifth level of triage, the cost was 1,762,887,000 Iranian Rials.

The number of non-urgent visits to the ED of public hospitals in Golestan is considerable. It can lead to a significant waste of hospital resources. Reducing unnecessary ED visits in hospitals can reduce the costs of the health system and improve the quality of hospital services.