None listed
Conditions
Brief summary
The project aims to assess the impact of an Integrated Point of Care Testing service (IPcOT) within the emergency department. Point of care testing (PoCT) involves the installation of a blood analyser within the emergency department that can process a selection of specific tests. The emergency department staff operates the machine, and a result is available in a few minutes. IPoCT involves integrating this machine with the hospital pathology service so that the results of testing performed on this machine are recorded within the SEALS database, and these results can be accessed through the patients electronic medical record. It would seem intuitive that having a IPoCT machine in the ED would have obvious benefits with rapid availability of blood tests allowing rapid decision making that would translate into shorter ED LOS. However, this does not take into account that a IPoCT machine must be operated by ED staff, rather than the lab staff, increasing the work load of ED staff and diverting them away from their usual duties. The IPoCT machine may be able to process a single sample in several minutes, however, in a busy ED where many patients require blood tests simultaneously it is likely that multiple staff will be competing to process blood samples on the one machine, leading to a back-log of tests so that turn-around times for IPoCT could be much longer than expected. The aim of this study is to determine the impact that the availability of point of care testing has on time to admission/discharge decision, and a secondary objective is to perform an economic evaluation (ie what is the cost per unit time saved in decision making time?).
Interventions
The intervention is to process blood tests of emergency department patients who meet inclusion/exclusion criteria using a point of care blood analyser stationed within the emergency department. The blood tests available are haemoglobin, electrolytes, creatinine, calcium, glucose, INR, troponin, D-Dimer, beta-HCG. Patient may recieve one or more of theses tests, but only once as part of their emergency department evaluation. Patients are involved in the study only as long as it takes for their do
The intervention is to process blood tests of emergency department patients who meet inclusion/exclusion criteria using a point of care blood analyser stationed within the emergency department. The blood tests available are haemoglobin, electrolytes, creatinine, calcium, glucose, INR, troponin, D-Dimer, beta-HCG. Patient may recieve one or more of theses tests, but only once as part of their emergency department evaluation. Patients are involved in the study only as long as it takes for their doctor to make an admission or discharge decision (typically several hours at most). Patients will be recruited over a period of 8 months.
Sponsors
Sty George Hospital
Study design
Allocation
Randomised controlled trial
Intervention model
Parallel
Primary purpose
Diagnosis
Masking
Open (masking not used)
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
All
Age
18 Years to No maximum
Healthy volunteers
No
Inclusion criteria
1.Age greater or equal to 18 years 2.Presenting to the Emergency department 3.Suspected acute coronary syndrome, or patient only requires blood tests that are available on point of care analyser
Exclusion criteria
1. Acute ST elevation mycardial infarct
Outcome results
None listed