Emergency care triages are a critical outcome that direct a patient to the correct level of care which matches their severity of symptoms. While most emergency rooms are equipped to handle a variety of symptoms and conditions across diverse patient populations, it's evident that there are times when a standard ER may not be the best option for care for a patient. Additionally, with hospital ERs around the country facing severe staffing shorts, it's duly important to ensure that staff are able to maximize their resources by treating the correct type of patient.
In the case of pediatrics, not all emergency rooms are optimally equipped or staffed to fully treat pediatric patients. In fact, only 16% of emergency residency training time is pediatric focused, while one in five children seek emergency care from an Emergency department, per year. This coupled with the fact that many emergency rooms don’t have pediatric speciality staff onsite shows the importance of directing patients to the emergent care resources not only based on their severity but also on the potential speciality care required as well, such as pediatric Emergency Departments. Similarly, for Labor & Delivery, often patients are directed to specific Labor & Delivery units when arriving at an ER department to facilitate superior care as ERs don’t have the specialist training to treat labor patients.
When simply trying to find emergent care resources closest to you, it may be difficult or confusing to distinguish if that emergency resource is truly going to be able to treat a condition and when an emergency arises, it's imperative a patient gets to a care location where they know they’ll get the best treatment. To better direct patients in the cases of the examples outlined above we’ve updated our displayed ER location data that can tailor a recommendation based on a specific treatment a patient might need. With this first iteration, we’re now able to dynamically display pediatric care availability as well as labor & delivery options for our patients that need emergent treatment for related specialities. With this update, we’ll be able to ensure that patients are getting the correct level of care while also allowing ER staff to see patients they’re optimally set up to serve.
