Sustainable Purchasing Practices: A Comparison of Single-use and Reusable Pulse Oximeters in the Emergency Department.

Background: Delivering healthcare requires significant resources and creates waste that pollutes the environment, contributes to the climate crisis, and harms human health. Prior studies have generally shown durable, reusable medical devices to be environmentally superior to disposables, but this has not been investigated for pulse oximetry probes.

Objective: Our goal was to compare the daily carbon footprint of single-use and reusable pulse oximeters in the emergency department (ED).

Implementation of the YEARS algorithm to optimise pulmonary embolism diagnostic workup in the emergency department.

Background: Excessive use of CT pulmonary angiography (CTPA) to investigate pulmonary embolism (PE) in the emergency department (ED) contributes to adverse patient outcomes. Non-invasive D-dimer testing, in the context of a clinical algorithm, may help decrease unnecessary imaging but this has not been widely implemented in Canadian EDs.

Aim: To improve the diagnostic yield of CTPA for PE by 5% (absolute) within 12 months of implementing the YEARS algorithm.

Emergency department utilization, admissions, and revisits in the United States (New York), Canada (Ontario), and New Zealand: A retrospective cross-sectional analysis.

Background: Emergency department (ED) utilization is a significant concern in many countries, but few population-based studies have compared ED use. Our objective was to compare ED utilization in New York (United States), Ontario (Canada), and New Zealand (NZ).

Methods: A retrospective cross-sectional analysis of all ED visits between January 1, 2016, and September 30, 2017, for adults ≥18 years using data from the State Emergency Department and Inpatient Databases (New York), the National Ambulatory Care Reporting System and Discharge Abstract Data (Ontario), and the National Non-Admitted Patient Collection and the National Minimum Data Set (New Zealand).