Low acuity and general practice‐type presentations to emergency departments: A rural perspective

Objective To estimate the number of general practice ( GP )‐type patients attending a rural ED and provide a comparative rural estimate to a metropolitan study. Methods Analysis of presentations to the two ED s in N orthwest T asmania from 1 J anuary 2009 to 31 D ecember 2013 using the D iagnosis, S privulis, A ustralian C ollege of E mergency M edicine ( ACEM ) and the A ustralian I nstitute of H ealth and W elfare ( AIHW ) methods to estimate the number of GP ‐type presentations. Results There were 255 365 ED presentations in N orthwest T asmania during the study period. There were 86 973 GP ‐type presentations using the ACEM method, 142 006 using the AIHW method, 174 748 using the D iagnosis method and 28 922 low acuity patients identified using the S privulis method. Conclusions The proportion of GP ‐type presentations identified using the four methods ranged from 15% to 69%. The results suggest that triage status and self‐referral are not reliable indicators of low acuity in this rural area. In rural areas with a shortage of GPs , it is likely that many people appropriately self‐refer to ED because they cannot access a GP . The results indicate that the ACEM method might be most useful for identifying GP ‐type patients in rural ED . However, this requires validation in other regions of A ustralia.