Abstract Details

Title Resident-Based Patient Triage Improves Acuity of Outpatients in a Neurology Urgent Care Clinic Setting

Topic General Neurology

Presentation(s) General Neurology Posters (7:00 AM-5:00 PM)

Poster/Presentation
Number 039

Objective To improve the acuity of pathology seen in an urgent outpatient clinic setting by implementing a resident-based patient triage system to evaluate potential patients.

Background A dedicated neurology urgent care clinic provides a valuable resource for patients with neurologic pathology necessitating urgent outpatient evaluation. In healthcare systems with automated clinic scheduling, it may be difficult to determine which patients are appropriate for such a clinic. This results in non-acute pathologies occupying the majority of encounters. Implementing a resident-based triage system in order to evaluate potential patients on a case-by-case basis may improve the acuity of patients/pathology seen in an urgent care clinic setting.

Design/Methods A scoring system was developed in order to contrast varying levels of acuity of condition. This acuity scoring system assessed each patient’s neurologic pathology, duration and severity of symptoms, access to care, and overall well-being. Utilizing the electronic health record, clinic encounter requests were evaluated on a case-by-case basis by a designated neurology resident. Acuity and duration of symptoms for 33 weeks of retrospective data comprising 220 neurology urgent care encounters prior to triage workflow implementation was compared to 18 weeks of patient data comprising 104 neurology urgent care encounters following implementation of triage workflow.

Results Implementation of a resident-based patient triage system for patients seen in the neurology urgent care clinic resulted in an improvement in mean acuity of patients (acuity score 1.97 to 4.19) and average duration of symptoms (46.66 months to 1.20 months).

Conclusions

Implementation of a resident-based patient triage system for neurology urgent care clinic encounters resulted in a significantly improved degree of appropriate patients/pathologies. Further studies may be done to more robustly standardize and more readily implement such workflows in the neurology urgent care setting.

Authors/Disclosures
Micah Etter, MD (University of Arizona Neurology) PRESENTER	Dr. Etter has nothing to disclose.
Tu Nguyen, MD	Dr. Nguyen has nothing to disclose.
Benedict R. Pereira, MD (Cedars Sinai Medical Center)	Dr. Pereira has nothing to disclose.
Patrick R. Burke, MD (The University of Arizona)	Dr. Burke has nothing to disclose.
Viktor Perovic, MD (University of Arizona Neurology)	Dr. Perovic has nothing to disclose.

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