Analysis of characteristics of patients who come to ‘emergency medical center via one-stop treat system for heavily drunken people’

Objective:
This study described the effectiveness of the one-stop treat system (OTS) and the improvements characterizing the patients who come to an emergency medical center via the one-stop treat system for heavily drunken people
Method:
An observational retrospective study was conducted on patients, aged 19 years or older, who visited the emergency department (ED) from January 2014 to December 2017 with alcohol intoxication (AI). The subjects were divided into two groups, that is, AI patients who come to ED directly or those who came via OTS. We compared and analyzed the characteristics of two groups including gender, age, date, mode of the ED visit, level of consciousness, diagnosis, ED length of stay (LOS), hospital LOS, and final outcomes.
Results:
A total of 8,144 patients were enrolled in the study. There were 2,221 AI patients who visited ED directly and 5,923 AI patients who visited ED via OTS. Patients arriving via OTS had more medical or surgical problems than the patients who came directly from the ED. Discharged patients via OTS showed a longer ED LOS (312 minutes [range, 169-520 minutes], P<0.001). Compared with patients who came directly from ED, the patients via OTS showed a higher admission rate (10.7% vs. 3.4%, respectively; P<0.001), and a higher death rate in ED (0.6% vs. 0%, respectively; P<0.001).
Conclusion:
Compared the characteristics of the patients from ED directly in 2014-2017, the patients via OTS had higher severity and admission rate, and a longer ED LOS. Our findings suggest that we should pay attention to patients via OTS because the patients have high severity of illness.

Key words: Alcohol; Alcohol intoxication; Emergency department