Anatomy of a demand shock: Quantitative analysis of crowding in hospital emergency departments in Victoria, Australia during the 2009 influenza pandemic.

Objective: An infectious disease outbreak such as the 2009 influenza pandemic is an unexpected demand shock to hospital emergency departments (EDs). We analysed changes in key performance metrics in (EDs) in Victoria during this pandemic to assess the impact of this demand shock.

Design And Setting: Descriptive time-series analysis and longitudinal regression analysis of data from the Victorian Emergency Minimum Dataset (VEMD) using data from the 38 EDs that submit data to the state's Department of Health and Human Services.