Emergency severity level-3 patient flow based on point-of-care testing improves patient outcomes.

Background: Overcrowding of the Emergency Department is rapidly becoming a global challenge and a major source of concern for emergency physicians. The desire to improve Emergency Department throughput requires novel approaches to patient flow.

Materials And Methods: We conducted a prospective and cluster-randomized study, to evaluate the impact in patient outcomes of a new patient flow based on Point-of-Care Testing (POCT).

Educational intervention together with an on-line quality control program achieve recommended analytical goals for bedside blood glucose monitoring in a 1200-bed university hospital.

Portable meters for blood glucose concentrations are used at the patients bedside, as well as by patients for self-monitoring of blood glucose. Even though most devices have important technological advances that decrease operator error, the analytical goals proposed for the performance of glucose meters have been recently changed by the American Diabetes Association (ADA) to reach <5% analytical error and <7.9% total error.