The Association of Emergency Severity Index Score and Patient and Family Experience in a Pediatric Emergency Department

Adam A Vukovic; Callie Krentz; Abigail Gauthier; Nusrat Harun; Stephen C Porter

doi:10.1177/23743735231179040

The Association of Emergency Severity Index Score and Patient and Family Experience in a Pediatric Emergency Department

J Patient Exp. 2023 Jul 16:10:23743735231179040. doi: 10.1177/23743735231179040. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Adam A Vukovic^{1

2}, Callie Krentz¹, Abigail Gauthier¹, Nusrat Harun³, Stephen C Porter^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Pediatrics, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Cincinnati, OH, USA.
² Division of Emergency Medicine, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH, USA.
³ Division of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH, USA.

Abstract

The study aim was to determine the relationship between a patient's Emergency Severity Index (ESI) score and their or their family's response to the key performance indicator (KPI) question on the post-visit patient and family experience (PFE) survey. Retrospective review of patients presenting to the Pediatric Emergency Department between July 1, 2021, and June 30, 2022, who completed the KPI question on an associated post-visit survey. We performed univariate analyses on all candidate variables; multivariable linear regression identified independent predictors of KPI on the PFE survey. A total of 8136 patients were included in the study. Although ESI score was significantly associated with PFE in univariate analysis, this association was lost in the multivariable model. Independent associations were appreciated with race/ethnicity, time to provider, length of stay, and procedure performance during the visit. Although ESI is not independently associated with PFE in this study, its interaction with factors such as time to provider, length of stay, and procedure performance may be important for emergency department providers creating interventions to impact experience during low acuity visits.

Keywords: emergency; experience; pediatric; triage.