Management of adult cardiac arrest in the COVID-19 era: consensus statement from the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine.

Introduction: The global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has caused significant worldwide disruption. Although Australia and New Zealand have not been affected as much as some other countries, resuscitation may still pose a risk to health care workers and necessitates a change to our traditional approach. This consensus statement for adult cardiac arrest in the setting of COVID-19 has been produced by the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM) and aligns with national and international recommendations.

Quantifying the proportion of general practice and low-acuity patients in the emergency department.

Objective: To accurately estimate the proportion of patients presenting to the emergency department (ED) who may have been suitable to be seen in general practice.

Design: Using data sourced from the Emergency Department Information Systems for the calendar 2013s 2009 to 2011 at three major tertiary hospitals in Perth, Western Australia, we compared four methods for calculating general practice-type patients. These were the validated Sprivulis method, the widely used Australasian College for Emergency Medicine method, a discharge diagnosis method developed by the Tasmanian Department of Human and Health Services, and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) method.

Access block can be managed.

Hospitals cannot manage their emergency patients when there is significant access block. There are solutions that should be implemented but require national leadership to be effective. These solutions include an immediate increase in the number of acute hospital beds, improved coordination and increased community capacity to manage medical patients with complex conditions outside acute public hospitals, improved hospital processes, and better standardisation of treatment within emergency departments.

Access block in NSW hospitals, 1999-2001: does the definition matter?

Objectives: To estimate the magnitude of access block and its trend over time in New South Wales hospitals, using different definitions of access block, and to explore its association with clinical and non-clinical factors.

Design And Setting: An epidemiological study using the Emergency Department Information System datasets (1 January 1999 to 31 December 2001) from a sample of 55 NSW hospitals.

Main Outcome Measures: Prevalence of access block measured by four different definitions; strength of association between access block, type of hospital, year of presentation, mode and time of arrival, triage category (an indicator of urgency), age and sex.