Influence of income on in-hospital mortality in older adults during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic: results from the EDEN-33 study.

Objectives: To determine whether income was associated with unexpected in-hospital mortality in older patients treated in Spanish public health system hospital emergency departments.

Material And Methods: Fifty-one public health system hospital emergency departments in Spain voluntarily participated in the study. Together the hospitals covered 25% of the population aged 65 years or older included in all patient registers during a week in the pre-pandemic period (April 1-7, 2019) and a week during the COVID-19 pandemic (March 30 to April 5, 2020).

Sociodemographic characteristics, comorbidity, and baseline functional status of older patients treated in emergency departments during the COVID-19 pandemic and associations with mortality: an analysis based on the EDENCOVID cohort.

Objectives: To describe the sociodemographic characteristics, comorbidity, and baseline functional status of patients aged 65 or older who came to hospital emergency departments (EDs) during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, and to compare them with the findings for an earlier period to analyze factors of the index episode that were related to mortality.

Material And Methods: We studied data from the EDEN-COVID cohort (Emergency Department and Elder Needs During COVID-19) of patients aged 65 years or older treated in 40 Spanish EDs on 7 consecutive days. Nine sociodemographic variables, 18 comorbidities, and 7 function variables were registered and compared with the findings for the EDEN cohort of patients included with the same criteria and treated a year earlier in the same EDs.

Implementation of the Spanish Triage System in the emergency departments of public health service hospitals in Andalusia, Spain.

Objectives: To describe the process of implementing the Spanish Triage System (SET, in its Spanish abbreviation) in nonspecialist hospital emergency departments (EDs) in the public health service.

Material And Methods: Multicenter cross-sectional study at 4 time cut-points (6 months before implementation and at the end of 1, 2 and 3 semesters afterwards). The study was carried out in 29 public hospital EDs in Andalusia.