Using Emergency Department Data to Inform Specialty Strategy: Analyzing the Distribution of 13,777 Consecutive Immediate Orthopaedic Consults in an Urban Community Emergency Department

Although an estimated 20% of emergency department (ED) visits are musculoskeletal in nature, it is unclear which of these require urgent orthopaedic consultation and which orthopaedic subspecialties are best suited for these consults. When an ED's internal staff does not have necessary orthopaedic coverage, transfer to other facilities is required. However, transfers pose major inconveniences and financial burdens to patients and can lead to long ED wait times, hospital financial loss from walk outs, decreased patient safety, and decreased staff morale. Therefore, it is beneficial for a hospital to have the appropriate staff readily available for consults. Data can be used to assess the orthopaedic needs of an ED. We evaluated the nature of urgent ED consults requesting the timely presence of an orthopaedic provider. METHODS: Between the years 2008 and 2017, the Orthopaedics Department of this Health System saw 13,777 patients from the ED requesting immediate consult from an orthopaedic provider. We retrospectively analyzed the distribution of anatomic areas and nature of these injuries for these visits. RESULTS: Hand, foot, and ankle consults comprised 75% of the volume. Knee, hip, and spine accounted for 15% of consults. Most injuries were fractures. Infections and sprains were also common. DISCUSSION: By determining and understanding this distribution, orthopaedic departments can improve their organization to better respond to urgent ED consults, allowing for the proper delivery of orthopaedic point-of-care service to patients, increased revenue for the hospital, proper availability of core competencies, and increased value to the healthcare delivery system as a whole. We also believe that the trends observed in our data are largely generalizable to EDs serving urban communities similar to ours. Thus, these results can help inform a synergistic strategy for the system comprising EDs, urgent care clinics, and orthopaedic surgeons servicing them.