‘See and Treat’ Clinic Service Evaluation at a Tertiary Care Hospital in Abu Dhabi

OBJECTIVES: We sought to evaluate the performance provided at a ‘See and Treat’ (ST) clinic at a tertiary hospital emergency department (ED) in Abu Dhabi, UAE, and to assess its impact on ED crowding. METHODS: We conducted a retrospective electronic medical chart review and database analyses. We included patients triaged as triage level 4 (T4) and triage level 5 (T5) as per the Emergency Severity Index treated at ED in the ST clinic and other ED areas, including the off-site Urgent Care Centre (UCC) between 1 June 2016 and 30 June 2017. We analyzed a group of process and outcome measures at our ST clinic and compared them to the same measures in other areas of our ED and the co-located UCC. The process measure analyzed was the door-to-doctor time. In addition, the outcome measures analyzed were the door-to-door time, unplanned return within 72 hours, and feedback from T4 and T5 triaged patients treated at the clinic. RESULTS: The number of patients enrolled in the study was 43 109. Of these, 11 329 (26.3%) patients were treated at the ST clinic, 6328 (14.7%) were treated at the UCC, and 25 452 (59.0%) were treated at the main ED. The door-to-doctor time was within 30 minutes for 89.0% of ST clinic patients, and 94.0% of patients experienced a door-to-door time of within two hours; 2.1% of these patients returned within 72 hours. Among these, 78.7% returned for an issue related to their first visit. However, none of the patients were admitted on their return visit. For patients presenting to UCC and other parts of our ED, we recorded a door-to-doctor time of within 30 minutes for 80.5% of patients and a door-to-door time of within two hours for 73.0% of patients. We found the difference in waiting times (i.e., door-to-doctor times between ST clinic patients and the rest of ED) to be statistically significant (p < 0.001, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.56–0.63). However, on comparing door-to-door times, we found the difference between ST clinic patients and the rest of ED patients was not statistically significant. CONCLUSIONS: Door-to-doctor times were shorter in ST clinics compared to other parts of our ED, but there was no statistically significant difference in door-to-door times when comparing ST clinics to the rest of the ED. ST clinic patients had a lower rate of unplanned return within 72 hours, of which, none required admission on the return attendance. We believe ST clinics have a positive impact on reducing ED crowding but acknowledge they are one of the many plausible solutions attributing to optimized patient flow in the ED.